MotelX 2025 Review: KARMADONNA Is A Morally Murky Thrill Ride

Aleksander Radivojevic is best known as a co-writer for A Serbian Film. That film is infamous for its brutal portrayal of Serbia, pulling no punches, and becoming so dark the contents of the film became a meme in and off itself. Karmadonna, his directorial debut, won't have the same reception, even though it also is quite the dark thrill ride. But seeping in are some of the magical-realist touches and heady fantasy elements of the other film Radivojevic wrote, Tears For Sale, an epic fantasy about professional funeral mourners.

Like A Serbian Film and Tears For Sale before it, the central premise is its unique selling point for better or worse. The problem here is that giving away the entirety of the premise, even though it is revealed quite soon, might spoil some of the surprises. So I am going to be as careful as possible to circumvent the major early reveal. In Karmadonna, the pregnant woman Yelena, somewhere in her forties, is psychologically tortured by a supernatural being, to make sure she is gonna kill a few bad apples in the Serbian criminal underworld ánd the media industry.

This deity-like figure is moralistic yet nihilistic, giving way to the philosophy that some people deserve to die to make the world a better place. The film never really challenges this point of view, and also has a slightly nasty conservative streak running throughout it, when it comes to subjects like abortion, homosexuality and the independence of women. It is not always clear where the film falls on the moral and political spectrum, and that is by design: the film is as murky as humanly possible, and like A Serbian Film wallows in the muck of the fall-out of difficult moralistic choices.

That this turns into something else when it is revealed, quite early on, who it is that Yelena is dealing with, is part of what makes the film worthwhile. The possibly culturally insensitive and blasphemous reveal left the audience laughing and gasping for air in equal measure. Karmadonna packs a punch, but is not without that sense of humor. Instead, it plays at times like a Troma-version of John Wick as directed by Sam Raimi, nauseatingly swirly camera-work included. There is something in here to offend everyone, and that might be the point.

The mileage may vary with the viewer in what they take away from the movie in regards to message, especially since the filmmakers seem to cherry-pick and choose their talking points somewhat willy-nilly. Is the torturer of Yelena pious or evil, an anti-capitalist anarchist, or a conservative gun-toting conspiracist? By the latter stretch of the movie, where the film takes a very dark turn into an gleefully nihilistic gore-fest it is hard to figure out what exactly the filmmakers want to say. They are saying so much, they might be saying very little.

That being said, Karmadonna gets by on the strength of its central premise alone, and has a few aces up its sleeve along the way. It's one of the most wildly entertaining and unpredictable films of the year, even if you have to take some very rough violence in stride. Having a central character that is late-trimester, does not mean the filmmakers pull any punches there, or treat her like an untouchable figure. Instead she is in real danger, and you sense that, from the opening scene where Radivojevic brutally bloodies a 13-year old kid. It's that kind of movie. 'Be prepared for feeling woefully unprepared for what is coming', Radivojevic seems to say. He's right, and Karmadonna is highly recommended because of it.