Satire’s definition is flexible, but not quite to the extent of “Krazy House.” This film, a bloody and anarchic hand grenade, opens with a shot of a cop plugging a nun full of bullets. It only escalates from there. It’s blasphemous in the most straightforward sense — imagine an Adult Swim infomercial directed by black-metal teenagers — and it takes place entirely within the confines of a sound stage that looks like the set from “Married…With Children.” The sitcom-within-the-film is called “Krazy House” (of course), and it centers on the Christian family: bucktoothed bumbler Bernie (Nick Frost); his wife Eva (Alicia Silverstone), who’s naturally way out of his league; boy-crazy daughter Sarah (Gaite Jansen); and shy son Adam (Walt Klink), who spends most of his time tinkering with a chemistry set in his bedroom.
Each one of these traits will be corrupted as the movie settles into its psychosexually loaded plotline, which involves the destruction wrought on this good Christian home by three Russian contractors. These jumpsuit-clad villains — led by Piotr (Jan Bijvoet) — tear apart not just the family’s drywall (and pipes, and floors … ) but also its very fabric. Adam starts cooking meth and hallucinating green gremlins; Sarah gets impregnated by one of the unibrowed mulleted cretins; Eva gets sick from inhaling dust at work and loses her high-powered job; Bernie shuffles around in his Jesus sweater and stupid broom shoes turning the other cheek.
The Christianity jabs are surface-level, though some interesting anxieties about masculinity bubble up from under them. Bernie’s faith renders him weak against an invading Russian horde that proceeds to emasculate him by sexually colonizing his wife and kids (yes, even Adam). It’s not until he literally denies Christ — a laid-back hallucination played by ’90s sitcom vet Kevin Connolly — that he’s able to “man up” and reclaim what’s “his” through pulpy ultraviolence. Later on, “Krazy House” gives Piotr a gonzo backstory, but by then the film has been throwing so much at you for so long that it barely registers.
Demented turns from both Frost and Silverstone — who between this and Jennifer Reeder’s “Perpetrator” is on a mission to take her image to some new and appealingly strange places — make “Krazy House” tolerable for far longer than it should be. Silverstone finds funny modulations in her character’s hysterical nagging and weeping, wailing “he died for our siiiiins” when Bernie’s initial attempt to defend her goes wrong. Everyone else is just blowing out the proverbial speakers with overwrought goofiness.
Haars and van der Kuil also tried to solve the problem of a single location by moving between different aspect ratios as well as resolutions: they display scenes parodying simple sitcoms in grainy 4:3, then switch to full-screen HD once Bernie starts following the homicidal voices he hears in his head. This does make the movie visually interesting, but it’s also just very messy — especially when combined with the nonstop bloodshed, juvenile shock value and random surrealist touches throughout.
It’s too much and not enough at the same time; even those who revel in chaos for its own sake might find themselves tapped out before the predictably hyperbolic finale of this very — very — long 86-minute film. “Are you offended yet?!” the filmmakers seem to be screaming here, their spit nearly fogging up our screens. If every synapse in your brain isn’t fried after watching this — maybe?
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