Synopsis
Based on a true story.
A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.
1983 Directed by Gerald Kargl
A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.
Schizophrenia, le tueur de l'ombre, Strah, Tango, Schizophrenia, 불안, 앵스트, Страх, La angustia del miedo, אנגסט, Medo, Korku, 焦虑
I'm quick to call any film that takes over my body a masterpiece. But I feel like I can justify that, any piece of art that can use its tools in a way that's so extreme that it gives me a physical reaction is worth admiring, in my opinion. This can be labeled as lazy, pretentious filmmaking, and in some cases it is, but it works. It's doing exactly what it sets out to do without any hesitation and that's thrilling to me. Obviously there's a line (I think some of you know the film I'm talking about) but when this is done in a creative, consistent, and captivating way, I can't help but feel as though it's something worth…
Mohamed Radwan's #2 Film Selection for Edgar
The camera...
That camera is a protagonist. It is alive...
It moves like a mouse in closed spaces, like a kite through buildings and trees, like an observable stalker through the streets, like a mirror of human faces observed closely, and turns its head as quickly as a bird.
The score...
That score haunted my soul. It sounds like an omen of death.
Few films utilize a score so hauntingly. At first glance, it is deceptively simple, as the horror score consists of around 4 tones. But it terrifies you. It sounds like a choir echoing through a long, dark tunnel during midnight. Sounds like that make me feel powerless. It made the…
If ever there was a film which truly had ice-water for blood, it is 'Angst'. Built out of fear, panic and sheer terror, it is night-snow-blue and broken granite, the orange flame of matches lit. 'Angst' is continually in a state of heightened restless anxiety. The kind of feeling like you are going to tear off your own skin if you can't get out of it some other way, that you are going to smash everything in the house and lay down in the broken parts of it and that still would not quiet the excitatory torment. The camera is vibrating, swaying, circling, shaking, soaring aloft, spattered with blood and water. Klaus Schulze's score is a series of interrupted and…
I don't know that I've ever seen a film that operates like this? Formally details the psychology of serial murder in uncompromising and unbearably close proximity; documenting this unhinged psychosis with an unpredictable camera that straps itself to the killer's headspace (and body), craning and lurching as it bleeds between the reasoned justifications, erotic impulses, and physical logistics of his decision-making. The ease with which this floats from his mundane inner voice—frequently detailing a history of slights that have inspired his sadism—to his completely clumsy, primal violence with minute awareness of space and procedure is horrifying. Not sure I'll ever watch it again, or ultimately what value it even has with regard to its subject, but it's certainly something to behold.
83
What is so remarkable about Angst is that it constantly plays and inverts and unleashes a different mode to the perspective by which we consume its horror, but never the effect. The ruthlessness of the evil is always consistent, but our understanding of what is unfolding, and how we're perceiving it, is very surprising. No matter the shocking surface of Gerald Kargl's film, and it is almost unwaveringly hard to watch - the icy-toned hues, glaring modern coldness, the detachment of human life lost, find an analytical peak from which to mix and mash with the often relentless energy of its terror. To find a balance between that observational discomfort and the visceral nature of its pacing is quite a task, but with the help of an unearthly soundtrack, Angst succeeds in chilling the bone while simultaneously rattling it. At its best, the film portrays the tangible energy of losing a battle of survival, and it's freaky as hell.
A home invasion movie from the perspective of a Dachshund paired with Klaus Schulze’s Tangerine Nightmare: this inspired Gaspar Noé to become a sick fuck.
A dynamic camera that is much lauded mixed with a simmering, ambient score from Klaus Schulze, krautrock god, creates a film at conflict with itself. The soundtrack is haunting, beautiful, and creepy all at once, while the camera work is jarring, abrasive, and intense. The voiceover monologue (think The Cremator) is rambling, but not incoherent, just erratic. This is a skilled crafting of what the urge to kill must be like for the mentally ill afflicted with such a compulsion. Whether it is accurate, I thankfully cannot say, but it is an affecting film.
But that's not my favorite bit. My favorite bit is when our murderer, whose head we mostly stay in, leaves the home of his victims. The…
Thrilled to find a serial killer flick that speaks to the compulsion to kill! Something I have never been able to wrap my head around until now! Unlike the Hollywood version of a serial killer with a diabolical intellect and methodical in his killing this Austrian film paints a more realistic picture of a man totally consumed by the compulsion to kill that he is incapable of exercising any kind of restraint!
The erratic, frantic, fevered and frenzied behavior translates on the screen well! I was totally sucked in by the exaggerated gestures and bizarre acting choices by the lead actor! It was unlike anything I have ever seen and yet I felt it was the closest we'd ever come…