Macabre…ish Horror Review: German Angst
German Angst, 2015/ 1 hr 52 min
A seemingly normal but deeply troubled, teenage girl with her beloved guinea pigs, has a secret, a man, likely her father, is tied to a bed in the master bedroom and one morning, she gets some shears and castrates him after listening to a news bulletin about a man who mutilated and murdered his wife, cut her up and scattered some of her body parts.
She relates to this man like he’s a guinea pig, even her brutality of him is seen through the lens of castrating and performing surgery on a guinea pig. After it’s over, she cleans up and packs a bag and takes a blade from a razor and cuts herself. There are photos of her and a man with his face scratched out if each of them.
Afterward, she gets an electric knife and finishes the job, taking inspiration from the news.
The entire movie is narrated by her with facts about guinea pigs, their behavior and how humans misunderstand them. (Jörg Buttgereit)
•
A pair of deaf lovers explore abandoned buildings, he man, Jacek (Matthan Harris), gifts the woman, Kasia (Annika Strauss), a medallion.
Flashback: Nazi’s brutalizing, terrorizing and killing Polish people. A young girl is chased and surrounded, and she has the medallion and when it is spun, a Nazi and presumably, her dad, change bodies. And inside the Nazi, her dad kills all the other Nazis.
Back to the lovers: They are accosted and terrorized by bullies. The bullies amp up the violence after discovering they have Polish names but the pair writes a note assuring them they are German but it doesn’t matter. Kasia is badly beaten and as she lay on the ground she takes out the medallion and spins it, Jacek and one of the bullies change bodies and the bully, now in Jacek’s body tried to communicate with them but he can’t.
The entire group goes to another part of the building, dragging Kasia and the man now inhabiting Jacek’s body. The rest of the group along with Jacek, inside the lead bully’s body, taunts the bully in his body and takes pleasure in brutalizing him. The entire group takes pleasure in torturing who they think is Jacek but is instead their fearless leader. They punch holes in his hands and tie a rope through them, bite flesh from his face and break his bones.
Then, off to the side, Kasia asks him what he’s doing and tells him he has a choice but Jacek doesn’t think he does. Soon Kasia doesn’t recognize him as they move him into a containment and light the man in Jacek’s body on fire and rejoice in it. Kasia is left wounded and traumatized against the door, Jacek leaves with the group, he is one of them now. (Kosakowski)
•
Photographer, Eden (Milton Welsh) and Maya (Désirée Giorgetti) are together again after a fiery break up. He tells her all he did to try to get over her including setting up a meeting with a mysterious woman from a blog and meeting her at a club called Mabuse. She tells him, he will know her when he sees her and he meets her, spinning on a pole. She’s a Ukrainian woman named Kira (Kristina Kostiv).
They hook up in a toilet and do coke, the lines cut on her thigh but she abruptly stops in the middle of oral. She runs and he chases. He follows her and a small group of people to another location and just outside the door he meets an elderly man named Petrus (Rüdiger Kuhlbrodt), who was watching him at the club.
He informs Eden that this is a private club. Eden wants to join but membership in this club has a different cost, Eden must accept Petrus as his Master and open himself up to things that he would consider insane. The membership, he is informed, is irreversible. So Eden accepts the insane, sealing it with a kiss.
The members of this club are educated and somewhat high status. The walls are filled with strange art and sensual photographs.
Eden is shown to a private room, disrobes and given a pipe to smoke, then he is handcuffed to the bed and blindfolded. He is warned that he will feel things and he’ll want to look but he is warned not to. After it’s over, Eden gets sick and is told it’s temporary.
- Maya is starting get upset by this story but Eden continues on…
Later, Eden tells how he missed Kira and called her, she warns him not to return to the club but he does. Kira tells him, if he must, look under the blindfold next time and how to do it. When Eden arrives he discovers Kira, has quit the club. He also has the same experience as last time but this time, this time he looks. He is horrified by what he sees and this time he sustains injuries.
Eden finds Kira’s address and witnesses the most bizarre and brutal suicide ever. After calling for help, Eden returns to the club and confronts Petrus about it and resigns his membership, or so he thinks.
Later, Eden and Maya make love but something happens, she is torn apart as she morphs into a monster that while still astride Eden, impales him with it’s own phallus, all the way through his body, exiting his mouth. (Andreas Marschall)
This is a horror anthology by
Directors: Michal Kosakowski, Andreas Marschall, Jörg Buttgereit. The segments are multilingual, German, Polish, English and sign language but there are English captions. Each segment is horrifying and graphic in there own unique ways. They are all very well done, with good effects and eerie stories.