The Devil’s Bath, 2024.
Written and Directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz.
Starring Anja Plaschg, Maria Hofstätter, David Scheid, Natalija Baranova, Claudia Martini, Lukas Walcher, Agnes Lampl, Camilla Schilien, Lorenz Tröbinger, Reinhold Felsinger, Elias Schützenhofer, and Elmar Kurz.
SYNOPSIS:
Austria in the 18th century. Forests surround villages. Killing a baby gets a woman sentenced to death. Agnes readies for married life with her beloved. But her mind and heart grow heavy. A gloomy path alone, evil thoughts arising.
Opening and closing with truly disturbing imagery, The Devil’s Bath shows that Austrian horror filmmakers Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz haven’t lost their ability to shock the senses. With a running time of approximately two hours, it’s the deliberate material in between tragedy that sometimes meanders its way to the inevitable without necessarily mining the most from its twisted 18th-century history (thoroughly researched by Kathy Stuart.)
Technically, the film begins with some on-screen text alluding to the reasoning behind why a woman in the woods would pick up an unwatched child and murder it, knowing that the response would be a public execution. It also ends with more straightforward historical descriptions that get the point across, making one wish that it was instead up front, leaving no room for early skepticism in wondering whether or not something supernatural or satanic is at play here. One can’t help but feel the execution would be far more harrowing and haunting from being told the history directly rather than allowing the viewer to piece it together over the unfolding experience.
The woman mentioned above has also been left in those woods, decapitated with her head on a spike, decomposing and rotting there as both a warning and reminder that this is the fate awaiting whoever else commits the unthinkable. For the newly married Agnes (Anja Plaschg, also a musician, delivering a captivating feature-length debut performance here, encapsulating the escalating hysteria alongside melancholy), having a baby is her ambition. As such, it remains a mystery (like it does to us for the time being) what would drive someone to kill a child. Or perhaps she knows the answer but cannot believe and process the truth.
Agnes’ husband, Wolf (David Scheid), has no interest in making love to her at night, let alone starting a family. The question then becomes why he got married in the first place, which seems to be more about having someone to help out with the fishing and other daily outdoor activities, not to mention the usual conservative roles such as cooking and cleaning. She is less qualified for those jobs, generally distracted and wandering the woods fascinated by butterflies and insects. This results in Wolf’s aggressively strict and controlling mother, Gänglin (Maria Hofstätter), verbally lashing out at Agnes until she feels like a useless disappointment, snowballing into depression from there. The oblivious Wolf doesn’t understand what’s wrong with his wife and wrongly assumes she will snap out of it.
The Devil’s Bath is most effective when the filmmakers are engaged with period specificity rather than hitting the usual story beats of a happy woman gradually losing her mind due to the trappings of patriarchal expectations or even well-meaning men who simply don’t understand. As such, it takes a while for the film to hit its sinister stride, becoming clear that Agnes wants to die but can’t kill herself due to religious devotion. There are alarming methods brought forth to “extract” the melancholia from Agnes, all as she continues to spiral and hallucinate horrific images.
Since The Devil’s Bath is meticulously researched with undeniably impressive attention to period piece detail (especially for a smaller budgeted film like this), strikingly unsettling photography from Martin Gschlacht, and an entirely committed Anja Plaschg who also composes the dread-inducing score and knows how to appropriately intensify that music as Agnes reaches the brink of insanity, which in turn gives her room for a stunning late reactionary scene filled with an uncomfortable, sick sense of relief. There are celebratory traditions for marriage and execution that are heniously gross, capitalizing on wicked juxtapositions between adults and children. A holy shower is required after watching this.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
Originally published June 30, 2024. Updated July 1, 2024.
