Little Albrun lives with her mother in the Austrian mountains far away from the next village. Life is hard for both of them: they have to tend to the goats and collect wood for the fire, no matter if it‘s storming out or not. Albrun is especially afraid of “Perchten“ taking her away, horrifying forest ghosts with fur and horns that they have evaded between the years. But it isn‘t the perchten that takes her mother, it‘s the plague that knows no mercy. If the villagers looked at the mother and daughter warily before, the plague death acts as confirmation of the two of them being witches. Years later Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen) still lives in the hut, has a child herself but no man, and she hasn‘t been to church in a very long time.

HAGAZUSSA is a film that has to be experienced. Life in the wilderness drags on incredibly slowly. Director Lukas Feigelfeld shows rural life in a way that seems like a horror trip for city dwellers: it‘s dirty, dark, and probably smells very bad. When Albrun walks in the forest she sees maggots on cadavers and when she milks the goals the milk drips down to her hands in a mixture between disgust and lust. Sometimes you hear the animals in the forest or the crackling of the fire, but usually there‘s an intense drone in this world, as if disembodied evil has established itself in the landscape and within Albrun‘s body. Whether it‘s really there or just in her head is something Albrun doesn‘t know and something the film never reveals.

Describing HAGAZUSSA as a horror film isn‘t wrong, but it‘s reductive. It‘s also a psychological portrait of a mother, a historical film about superstition, and a psychedelic trip. You want to see every detail of this world and every facial movement of the actors and the soundtrack makes you yearn to experience it on the biggest possible subwoofer system.

Christian Klose

Translation: Elinor Lewy