Cold Hell, 2017.
Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky.
Starring Violetta Schurawlow, Tobias Moretti, Robert Palfrader, Sammy Sheik, and Verena Altenberger.
SYNOPSIS:
A woman witnesses a brutal murder in her neighbour’s apartment building. The killer sees her, and the two take part in a tense struggle that will change both of them forever.
Cold Hell, a tense new thriller from Oscar-winning director Stefan Ruzowitzky, (The Counterfeiters) is an adrenaline-fueled actioner mixing stunts and scares with political and social drama.
On the streets of Vienna a killer lurks. Özge Dogruol (Violetta Schurawlow), a kick boxer by day and taxi driver at night, witnesses one of the gruesome murders first hand, along with the accoutrements of ritualistic murder and evidence of the horrific torture dealt out to the victim. She does not see the killer’s face. However, it soon becomes clear that the killer believes that she has.
What follows is an inventive and ultra-fast moving film taking in not only Özge’s fight for survival, but also her personal conflicts with society at large. The film does a great job at tackling plenty of big issues during its lean running time, with Özge’s status as an Austrian woman of Turkish heritage providing insightful – and often alarming – social commentary running alongside the main punching power of the chases and action set-pieces. There is plenty of late-night cinema style gore and horror, but the revenge quota is upped and our hero is never once seen as the victim.
Supporting Özge through her life in the killer’s targets is the detective Christian Steiner (Tobias Moretti), a tough policeman with his own cross to bear in the shape of his elderly father. Christian looks after his brash and unpredictable dad when not working, caring and washing him when necessary.
Özge sees some of this home-life of the two men, and begins to recognise their bond, which in effect makes Christian easier to understand. The two actors play their characters’ different backgrounds well against each other, and the result is a compelling human drama. Özge’s own Turkish-born family holds its own traumas, and after Özge visits her parents at home it becomes clear how awful her own past is, and how she has been fighting her whole life.
Beautifully shot through a Giallo-esque filter of city light and shadow, Cold Hell is a hard as nails movie with a powerful undercurrent of social and religious themes that mark it out as a cut above. More than anything else it puts the emphasis on Özge’s experience of a racist, misogynistic, and sexist midnight world, and her ability to fight back harder than anyone (or anything) else.
COLD HELL is exclusively on Shudder from March 15th
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★/ Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert W Monk is a freelance journalist and film writer.
Originally published March 14, 2018. Updated December 3, 2022.
