Metacritic-Rezensionen

Hagazussa is further distinguished through a patina derived from David Lynch and Panos Cosmatos—slow, deliberate, perpetually unsettling. The film takes its time, but it drags the viewer along the way toward a mind-shattering oblivion.

For those who can embrace Hagazussa more as an experience than as a spook show, this film is utterly absorbing and hard to shake.

This is a frequently ravishing film, as attuned to the mysticism of landscapes as prime Herzog, while capable of jolting us with the occasional brutal image.

It looks and feels far more substantial than most indie debuts, confidently bending genre rules with its minimalist dialogue and hallucinatory plot, which owes more to David Lynch or Lars von Trier than to more orthodox horror maestros.

His effort to cram in every aspect of the history of late Medieval witch fever, from repression of women to fear of the outsider to mushroom trips, becomes a chore, and a grisly twist in the final chapter, fire, just feels shocking for shock's sake. A historical psychological study like this doesn't deserve a stomach-churning moment like that, especially when all it does is push Albrun even further away.

A frustrating genre picture that’s just too dreary to be scary.