My dear friends, my slight obsession with found footage is well-known by now. I don’t write about all of them, of course, simply because I’m lazy and often forget.
Today, I choose to bring you the most recent one I’ve seen: Sorgoi Prakov – My European Dream aka Descent Into Darkness.
Sorgoi Prakov, from 2013, is a product of the French, who, let’s be honest, have a certain knack for producing little gems (see Inside – À l’intérieur or the well-known Martyrs). With a budget and cast severely cut to the bone, the director (Rafaël Cherkaski) is himself the protagonist of this film and has absolutely committed to making himself detestable.
The Meaning of Sorgoi Prakov – In reality, it’s a nightmare and both Sorgoi and we are neck-deep in it.
As soon as I finished watching Sorgoi Prakov, I was confused. It’s a film that left me with many questions and there were also some things that didn’t quite add up, so I’ll try to analyze the meaning of this film as best as I can.
Let’s say that if I were to limit myself to reviewing the film as it is, without much thought, I would have a lot to criticize. The character of Sorgoi undergoes an unsensible escalation; he is initially presented as a relatively stable, calm, and decent character, only to transform into something absolutely unrealistic. I believe that even the unpleasant events he experiences are not enough to “justify” such a radical change in personality. Looking for an alternative interpretation…
The Elegant Allegorical Hypothesis vs. the Hypothesis of a Fleeing Schizophrenic Madman
There are two interesting hypotheses about the meaning of Sorgoi Prakov that allow us to make sense of what seems to be a otherwise too sudden and unrealistic escalation.
The first hypothesis, purely allegorical, concerns the interpretation of Sorgoi’s journey as the journey of many “immigrants”, many of those who leave terrible countries with the hope of the “American dream“, or in this case, the “European dream“, only to arrive in a place where support, acceptance, and help are practically nonexistent. A sort of “exaggeration” of this process and evolution, which starts with good intentions and then leads to madness.
The second hypothesis, much more relevant to the plot, concerns Sorgoi’s delicate mental state. There were several points that made me wonder: what the actual fuck, is he ok?
Let’s start from the beginning: we know that Sorgoi was hired by a mythical entity to record this documentary around Europe, and so far, so good. However, from the beginning, we never really hear from his producers; even when he loses his credit cards (no small matter), he never really manages to have a useful conversation with these “mythical” producers. And already here, things started to smell fishy to me, especially because many of Sorgoi’s problems stem from the loss of these funds.
The other rather suspicious event is the phone call he has with his mother, where he says he doesn’t want to return to his country, that he hasn’t done anything wrong, and that the police are looking for him. It’s all very suspicious, especially because we are at the beginning of the film, when the mental decay has not yet reached its peak of the last half hour.
A kind reddit user has expressed an interesting hypothesis: Sorgoi actually killed someone in his country,
Considering Sorgoi as an unstable person, already on the run and already with a record, allows us to contextualize all the subsequent events much better.
The idea that this crazed lunatic invented the whole story of the documentary, is a murderer in his country, and fled to France simply because he is freaking crazy, authorizes him to become the absolute piece of s* in the last 30 minutes.
This theory is what made me decide to write about Sorgoi Prakov because it is an hypothesis that absolutely makes sense, and the film presents it in a very “subtle” way. Also, because if it weren’t the case, I would really struggle to explain the horrifying acts that Sorgoi performs towards the end. It’s something that doesn’t make sense coming from a mentally stable person, whereas it can have its reasons if we consider Sorgoi as an already disturbed character.
Sorgoi Prakov – The last half hour I swear is terrible
It’s a film that I definitely won’t remember for its found-footage component, but especially for (have mercy, it was terrible) the last half hour. You understand well that it’s absolutely not a film for the faint-hearted.
It’s a film that I recommend without too many expectations; I like the underlying idea and it’s interesting, the theory of the disturbed protagonist from the outset made me appreciate it even more, perhaps I would have developed this aspect a little more (assuming that this is indeed the director’s intention). So, overall, a good film that we add to our horror inventory. Also: it’s practically available for free streaming (click here), there’s no need to search for it in some forum for schizophrenics. Enjoy!
