Tag: Austrian

The idea of Krampus, coming from a humble American, is fascinating. An evil Santa Clause? A beast that steals away naughty kids? Why worry about coal when your goddamn life can be on the line?

That is about as much as I really know about the idea. It was flirted with a bit in Rare Exports, we recently had the horror-comedy Krampus as well. It seems Krampus fever is hitting America stronger than ever, and we are eating it up.

Needless to say, I was very excited to be watching Greetings From Krampus, a documentary from the Austrian area, an actual source on their customs and belief of Krampus. How it has grown through the tiny villages and the national phenomenon that has grown for many to have a worthwhile sort of career in it as well.

Horny little buggers they are.

It turns out there is a lot I didn’t know about Krampus. Exciting! Did you know there were a lot of creatures like Krampus, that are not Krampus, but come out at the same time as Krampus? Krampus is basically a demonic pet of St. Nicholas. But they also have the Perchten, which are other humanoid esque creatures. And basically, they get weeks of celebration after the Krampus.

But for the most part, these things are celebrated with Krampus Run events. First of all, to get rid of all the past shenanigans where people would dress up and cause problems, the Krampus ideas were outlawed for some time. Only the ruralist villages still did it. But they had official troops who would get together, have rules, to dress up and do appropriate mischief for the holidays, and not just any weirdo in a mask. That way they have some form of checks and balance!

Anyways, basically each villages has a troupe, with some amount of members, to dress up, make their own costumes and masks and rules and funds as a part time job. They travel to these different Runs, where there could be 60-80 different troupes going through a special path while onlookers cheer and get spanked and whatever.

A huge event, many of them all in a few week span, while the rest of the time is spent making sure Krampus awareness happens. Like teaching kids that Krampus isn’t real and to know its a person in there and NOT use it as a tool to frighten kids into behaving.

Overall, there is a lot of useful information in this movie. However, what it lacks on is the lore itself. It does talk about it some, but I thought it would go a lot more into the lore aspects of it. This is basically Krampus Run, the movie. We see so many clips of them, and groups talking about them and their traditions. It is extremely repetitive, especially when it goes back to topics they covered 40 minutes prior.

Cool information, very unique, just not diverse enough and easily boring in the last half hour as you wonder how much longer it will be until finished.

“You know what your website needs?” I hear these words all the time. People offering suggestions for genres, or movies to review. I like suggestions, so this is great. “Your website needs more horror films from other countries.” Well, that is a very specific request. But let’s do it.

Now the person who requested that most likely meant something Asian. They have a lot of crazy scary horror films, if I am to believe my friends. Since I am afraid of scary things, I never really jumped into that subset. So instead, let’s take it slow and dive into European Horror. Specifically, Austrian.

Oh hey, look at that. Austria’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film in the next Oscars is actually a horror movie! That means it is either really good, or Austrian cinema is really lacking.

That is why I am looking at Goodnight Mommy, or, Ich Seh, Ich Seh (which of course does not mean Goodnight Mommy in German). I assume the name change in English is because they didn’t want their film compared to Foghorn Leghorn.

“Ah see, I see, sons, why are you wearing those masks?” – Foghorn Leghorn playing the mother.

Lukas (Lukas Schwarz) and Elias (Elias Schwarz) are twins, let’s say 11, living in a secluded and rich house in the Austrian countryside. There are farms nearby, woods, a lake, some caves, everything they could want. And eventually their mom (Susanne Wuest) comes home! Yay!

Or…or does she? Their mom was involved in some sort of accident. She had a lot of surgery on her face. So her face is wrapped up in bandages, with just her eyes and mouth visible. But the boys believe that something is different. Their mom is meaner and more distant. She has created a lot of rules that keep the boys mostly in home or right in the yard.

She doesn’t take them to town. She orders in food so they can just be alone for a good long time while she heals. They are alone and they are pretty certain that the lady is not their mother under the bandages. But with a dad out of the picture and no real ability to talk to anyone, what are a couple of kids supposed to do?

Also featuring Hans Escher as a priest and Elfriede Schatz and Karl Purker as two Red Cross workers.

“Why the hell aren’t you showing any faces in these pictures?” – You, the reader.

On the comment card after the film, I wrote “I am completely unsettled.” That wasn’t descriptive enough though. I should have also mentioned that my jimmies were in fact rustled as well. In all honesty, the best way to describe my emotions after the film can probably only be described as an emoji, but I don’t use those and I don’t want to find the appropriate one.

This is not a typical horror. It isn’t full of scares throughout, but a good chunk of the film is instead just a bit eerie. The directors spend a lot of time building the mood before things really start to hit the fan. There are glimpses of madness, but they are in short bursts, or told through dreams, letting the creepiness build.

But the in the entire third act, we reach the level of things you come to expect from the drama, and it pays off wonderfully.

Two aspects of this movie I really enjoyed. One, it is a mystery of sorts technically. But the mystery doesn’t seem to be that important. I imagine most people will “figure it out” before they finally reveal what is going on, but that doesn’t take away from the film. Once I had my guess, I enjoyed watching the film to look for hints or clues to see if what I thought was right. It was still a good experience.

Two, the directors used a lot of silence which is a lacking sound from most modern horrors. Silence is a wonderful tool that can be used to make a situation far more tense. And I don’t mean “Silence, followed by loud scary noise to make you jump!”. No, just silence to make the gross or scary a bit more realistic and thus a bit more darker.

I don’t want to see Goodnight Mommy again. My body couldn’t take it. I hope some of the more graphic scenes eventually leave my brain completely because of how brutal they were. Goodnight Mommy has to be a good horror film, because it scared me into wanting to see it a second time.

Hooray hooray! I have finally got a chance to see Amour, the last movie I needed to see for all the Best Picture nominees this year. BEFORE the award, not several months after.

Plus, it is a foreign film, from Austria, in French!

I must be growing up. I am an adult now, watching adult movies, in adult speeds.

Adults watch their form of adults (old people) do things, right?

Amour means love, but you knew that. Bitches love amour, and surely if it is about old people, we will get to see a wonderful, blossoming relationship despite their limiting factors. Crap. It could also go the other way. The super sad way.

Studies have shown that old people have a higher chance of dying soon, than say, teenagers. Are we going to see the end of a life, and how sad it is to lose someone you love? Especially if you lose them very very slowly? I should move the above picture ahead a few seconds just to check.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Look at how sad she is! Fuck, we are in a drama folks! Prepare the ship! Tears are incoming!

Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) have lived long and prosperous lives. They love music, and have helped musicians with sponsorships (Alexandre Tharaud). They are rich, for whatever reason, and live in luxury. They have a beautiful daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), who is married with kids off in another part of Europe, and life is sweet.

But one morning, during a normal breakfast, Anne becomes unresponsive, just staring out into space, unable to respond to any sort of stimuli from her husband. Eventually she snaps out of it, but it still puts him into quite a scare and he takes her to the doctor. Something is blocking something else in her brain, and if they don’t take care of it, it could happen again but worse.

Well, the surgery goes wrong. A 5% chance, but now Anne finds it hard to walk, and she is forced to live in her own home, bound by a wheelchair. She might get better, or it might get worse. But you already know which way it is going to go.

She starts to move much slower, eventually half of her body gets paralyzed, and she becomes entirely bed ridden. The pain is unbearable, it causes her to scream out in pain throughout the day. She. Wants. To. Die.

But Georges can’t just let her kill herself, can he? The love of his life?

Oh no! It just keeps zooming! I can’t stop, we have crashed straight into sad land!

Whew. That is all I can really say, just whew. I can also say that this film is perfect. I often dislike films for not being realistic enough, in terms of character actions and dialogue, but this one might be on the other extreme side of the scale. /Too real/ and not enough, I guess…entertainment? Even when I go to a drama, and even if it is sad and I cry my eyes out, I still expect to be entertained by the story.

But Amour doesn’t really let me do that. The scenes in this movie are quite long, so the acting was clearly there. But they are too long. They are too slow. Many minutes of watching the husband try and feed his halfway paralyzed wife. Despite feeling the feels that were given to me on the screen, I was still combating sleep the first half of the movie. It was just far too incredibly slow, perhaps perfectly mimicking the slow death of a loved one.

But again, the acting is incredible. If the Oscars are based on talent, I think Emmanuelle Riva wins the best Actress award. The things she did in that movie were incredible and honestly no one else came close to her sort of delivery.