Is there actual violence to animals in this film?

No, it's not real.

All of his movies depict some form of animal abuse, cruelty, death, mutilation, violence, etc. For example in this film there are three depictions. I don't know if in today's day and age any of this could be real, and chances are it's simulated. However, he has repeatedly used real live stock footage of killing real animals in his movies, (such as slaughter house killings).

In this particular movie, there are some very disturbing images and sounds. In the third act, Willem beats birds to death, but they allow enough "away" visuals where there's so much camera movement, it's clearly fake.

There is a view of a deer with a stillborn fawn half birthed and hanging out of the mother. But I asked about this image as well, and was told it was digitally created. I honestly don't know because this is a very real circumstance, and it's very possible that nature photographers naturally, in the course of their work, managed to capture real images. And if they are real, while certainly not images of inflicted animal cruelty, and in fact just natural occurrences, they can still be upsetting to people who, like myself, are better at handling images of humans in distress than seeing animals in pain, suffering, or somehow mutilated or contorted.



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Sic vis pacem para bellum.

Agreed. I'm not someone who likes seeing beings being killed for entertainment or any other reason.. and comparing this movie to others ive seen depicting slaughter / abuse... its not that bad, especially since its not real. Like the previous said, there's a bird that gets killed but its obvious fake so don't worry about it.