The Devil's Bath
Directed by Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison. Giving a voice to the invisible and unheard women of the rural past, THE DEVIL’S BATH is based on historical court records about a shocking, hitherto unexplored chapter of European history.
From the directors of Goodnight Mommy, comes a chilling psychological descent into the rural past.
Cast: Anja Plaschg, David Scheid, Maria Hofstätter, Natalija Baranova, Camilla Schielin, Lorenz Tröbinger, Claudia Martini, Agnes Lampl, Lukas Walcher, Reinhold Felsinger, Elias Schützenhofer
Member Reviews
I loved this film
Didn't work for me. I understand the complexity and horror of depression and the lengths to which people will go to escape it, but I didn't feel that bad for the main character in this movie. Perhaps partly because she was so happy at the beginning, almost sort of silly. Then life got rougher. And she got depressed. But life was hard for everyone then, she didn't have it that bad, I mean it wasn't like she had a traumatic childhood followed by an abusive marriage. Suck it up, babe, everyone else does. Beautiful cinematography though, and great acting, 2 skulls for that.
This wasn’t a horror movie. It was a disturbing and depressing based on a true story movie. It wasn’t scary at all. Most of the movie was boring with action only starting in the last 40 min.
Certainly a grim movie. The real horror is found in realizing that people lived like this and saw few options for escape, other than fleeing to monasteries or convents. The plot derives from actual incidents of suicidal women who, fearing hell and not receiving Christian burial, committed infanticide. People who committed suicide had their corpses desecrated and, if buried, were placed in unmarked graves. Unbaptized infants and infidels were also not buried in churchyards. All sorts of superstitions were associated with those executed, including the belief that the body parts and blood of the condemned carried healing properties. One should be grateful for the freedom of self-determination enjoyed today, though too many still commit suicide. The sense of community people enjoyed then, on the other hand, seems lost to us. We have other anxieties, such as loneliness, isolation, alienation, and a foreboding sense of doom (from environmental catastrophe, disintegrating families, mass migration, nuclear annihilation, the loss of faith in secular and religious institutions, the decline in responsive government) which haunt us.
The horror in this movie is the living conditions of peasants in the 1750s so don’t expect jump scares or slashers. It’s a dark historical drama with some disturbing scenes and beautiful cinematography. If that’s not your bag then keep scrolling but if you like that artsy s**t then hit play. It’s been a week and I can’t stop thinking about it so it’s five skulls for me.