No other film has been as long-awaited in the German horror community as the episodic film GERMAN ANGST. Directors Jörg Buttgereit, Andreas Marschall, and Michal Kosakowsi joined forces and made a crowdfunding campaign with a brutal teaser and, in turn, the horror community was immediately on their side. GERMAN ANGST is an anthology with two shorter segments by Buttgereit and Kosakowski and a longer one by Marschall. Buttgereit’s FINAL GIRL begins with close-up shots of toes, skin, hair, and animal fur – visceral corporeal images that remind us that bodily surfaces are dangerous zones that only seem familiar from a distance. A radio news story of real Berlin-horror seeps into the film. We hear a voiceover of a girl talking about her three-legged guinea pig Mucki as bad things occur. Though the splatter scenes are less inspired, Buttgereit successfully creates an oppressive atmosphere. Those who wish to do so can regard FINAL GIRL as a commentary on the debate surrounding the exploitation and empowerment of rape revenge films. Michal Kosakowski’s MAKE A WISH is a perpetrator/victim role-reversal tale that is conceptually more interesting than it is on film. The Nazi gang that robs and pesters a deaf-mute couple are as believable as punk characters at the local theater. Of the three, Andreas Marschall is the most stylistically assured director. His segment ALRAUNE could easily be turned into a big budget feature-length film. It is a neo-Giallo filled with elegantly staged sequences of sex, addiction, and violence akin to Cattet and Forzani’s AMER and THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS but with a more classical storyline. Incidentally the film has nothing to do with Hanns Heinz Ewer’s novel ALRAUNE.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy