German Angst

Like usual art for the sake of art,gore for shock... Big fan of European horrors,specifically French.This trilogy is artful,disturbing and that's that.Didn't provide with any substance to really engage me.Better to rewatch the great Antichrist film,by van Trier again...

The best story is probably "Final Girl", which opens the movie, probing that less is often best. It is the shortest, only has occasional narration as a girl mutilates her (probably abussive) father, and ends when it starts to get more interesting, leaving you wanting more, which is good anyway. The second segment, "Make a Wish", is a story of old nazis and present-day neo-nazis torturing and killing Polish persons in the past and the present. It is the more complex, a tale that mixes strong ideological content with fantasy and extreme violence, but it keeps the tension. "Alraune", the third one, is the last, and I guess it was placed in the end because it delivers what horror fans like best: sex and gore. But it is the less effective: it is decidedly the worst. Too silly approach to male menopause crisis, with not-too-pleasant actors, anti-erotic situations and despite its sucking tentacles, flirt with S&M and horrific sex scenes, it is the less "angst" inducing segment of the three. A nice puke trilogy, though.

A horror anthology from three of Germany's most shocking film-makers, German Angst opens with Final Girl, a unusually weak effort from Nekromantik/Schramm director Jörg Buttgereit, in which a young woman vents her anger on her abusive father by castrating him and cutting off his head, all the while waxing lyrical about her pet guinea pig Mucki. Heavy on the artsy-fartsy pretentiousness, but surprisingly light on the gore (the castration occurs off-screen, although Buttgereit doesn't spare us the sight of the victim's junk), this first story is the most disappointing of the three.

The second segment, Michal Kosakowski's Make A Wish, is far more satisfying. Annika Strauss and Matthan Harris play a deaf and dumb couple of Polish descent who are humiliated and tortured by a group of racist thugs, but who manage to turn the tables on the gang's leader through the use of a magical amulet that allows the transference of souls. A nasty wartime flashback to the massacre of some Polish villagers by SS soldiers kicks off the strong stuff, and when poor innocent Strauss gets a bunch of fives in the face, its abundantly clear that this one isn't going to pull any punches.

The third story, Alraune, from Tears of Kali director Andreas Marschall, is a lot of fun if only for its sheer weirdness. Milton Welsh plays fashion photographer Eden, who recounts to his girlfriend Maya (Désirée Giorgetti) how he has been lured into joining a bizarre cult where unimaginable pleasures can be experienced, just so long as one doesn't break the rules. Of course, he does just that, and what follows is seriously bizarre, kinda like Cronenberg meets Lovecraft, with some messy mutilation involving broken glass and a toothy tentacular sex-monster.

7/10—after a frustratingly poor start, German Angst proves to be a rather entertaining anthology.

If you are into anthologies, this has some pretty good stories to tell. Starting off with a witty one, it gets better and better. The best of the three "shorts" being told last, which is good thinking/planning. The first story has a pretty solid story/idea, which unfortunately is being blocked a bit by sub-par "acting" (if you can call it that). The development and the "twist" (if you can call it that), is more than decent, but the acting might bother people (or not, it's up to you, if you care or not).

The second one is also really good, also has a couple of issues with some of the acting. In this case it's more the support "players" than the couple who are the main characters in this. And then comes the last one. And that's really how you should end a anthology, because the last impression stays with people (which could be the reason why some rated it higher than they actually would have if they'd shown the shorts in a different order). Apart from the horror theme itself, there is not a major connection between those movies, they all handle a different sort of "fear" ... and that's a good thing too.

A very good movie,good stuff. it has a good art feeling to it