The Wife of (the Devil's) Bath

Horror comes in many forms. Masked giants wielding sharp objects. Shuffling reanimated corpses with a taste for your flesh. Homicidal dolls that share your bed. Ventriloquist dummies that simply exist. There are many, many ways to approach the genre, but setting your story in a time period before indoor plumbing, women's autonomy, and Tylenol might be the most reliable way to keep your modern audience on edge. 

Quick Plot: In one of the cheeriest prologues this side of the millennium, a woman drops her baby down a waterfall, then turns herself into the authorities to be beheaded. Welcome to Europe!

Somewhere nearby, we meet peasant Agnes on her wedding day to Wolf, a pleasant enough fellow who borrows a little more money than Agnes would like to purchase their isolated, roomy forest home. It's the perfect place to raise a family, though Wolf doesn't seem overly interested in the mechanics needed to make that happen (at least with a woman). 

Poor Agnes glumly deals with her new life: sorting out fish, washing what looks to be very itchy clothes, and constantly dodging her mother-in-law's criticisms about how to store cast iron cookware. Not surprisingly, it becomes pretty unbearable. This being the 1700s, the therapy and antidepressants that might improve the day to day come in the form of prayer and leeches. Agnes can't bear it. 

The Devil's Bath is written and directed by the team of Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz of Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge, equally tragic stories that also explore the idea of women who can't seem to exist comfortably in their realities. The style is much more akin to The VVitch and Hagazussa, only even less of a straightforward genre movie. While there are some extreme acts of violence, The Devil's Bath unfolds more as slice-of-life human drama than cover-your-eyes horror.

Still, being a poor farmer's wife in 18th century Austria was absolutely a horror movie in itself. We can complain about the grossness of something like reality TV dating competitions all day long, but if a pre-Bachelor world meant entertainment came from public beheadings and blood-drinking afterparties, maybe we should feel a little comfort. Life is hard, and it's always been so, but at least our prescription for feeling that way isn't to have a hole cut into the back of our necks so we can run early dental floss through the wound to raise our spirits.

As they've demonstrated with the earlier films, Fiala and Franz have a bleak, but kind of beautiful view of the world. It's a terrible place filled with people capable of terrible acts, but there's also a certain victory in how they let their unstable characters make their own choices. Said decisions often lead to painful death, but there's a strange sense of satisfaction for the tortured leads. 

High Points

The Devil's Bath is almost entirely seen from Agnes's point of view, and without a compelling performer in the role, it simply wouldn't work. Anja Plaschg doesn't get to say much as Agnes, but her face is that of a silent film star, and it makes every scene scream. Plaschg also composed the film's haunting score, so double points to her.

Low Points

Aforementioned Hagazussa and The VVitch have similar styles of slow-mounting tension in a harsher time period, but the very fact that they share so many similarities to The Devil's Bath makes some of the latter's weaknesses more apparent. The pacing of those films feels necessary. In The Devil's Bath, there's something a bit too inconsistent in the storytelling that makes the two hour runtime feel even longer

Lessons Learned, the 18th Century Edition

Traditional wedding gifts included the timeless apron, but if you REALLY cared about the bride to be, you brought her the severed finger of an executed murderer

Mother-in-laws know best, then and now

Pin the tail on the donkey's origins involved a lot more chicken blood

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don't know that anyone is going to have a great time with The Devil's Bath (and if you do, I don't know that I'm picking you as my next badminton doubles partner). This is a dark, cruel film. That said, it's a very well-made dark, cruel film, and it has more on its mind than simple shock value (even though that's certainly there in spades). If you're in the mood to get brought down a few pegs, find this one on Shudder.

Supertwins Unite

In this day and age, positive buzz on a horror movie can be a dangerous, dangerous thing. Any film that premieres to a positive reception will inevitably then catch an equally negative blowback once too-smart-for-fun horror fans decide they sound cooler if they dub something as being overrated (see: The Babadook and It Follows). 

Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s Goodnight Mommy seems to have suffered a similar fate. In my opinion, like the aforementioned oddly divisive horror films of last year, this one also more than merits its initial positive reception.

Quick Plot: Elias and Lukas are an especially close pair of Austrian twins who live with their pseudo-celebrity mother in an isolated but sprawling country estate. As Ma recovers from surgery, the twins spend their time doing healthy youth activities like playing in the outdoors and collecting giant cockroaches.

Life isn't quite as bucolic as it used to be though, as Ma seems to have changed. She's distant now, especially to the more rascally Lukas. Wrapped in gauze bandages, Ma may not even be the same woman who once so lovingly cared for her boys. Eventually, Elias and Lukas decide to find out the hard, super glue-and-restraint way to determine if she's an imposter.

Goodnight Mommy is a strange, wonderfully creepy little film. The setting and tone bears an odd resemblance to Ex Machina's isolated modern setting, with the sparse but carefully detailed art direction helping to set the scene. The performances, particularly by the otherworldly young Lukas and Elias Schwarz, are perfectly unnerving in just the right way. 

To say more risks spoiling what for me, was a shock of an ending. In all honestly, I can’t remember the last time I felt so darn dumb at a reveal, because in hindsight, Goodnight Mommy is exceptionally clever. It never cheats, and that allows its ending to hit all that much harder.

High Points

Twins in cinema is always ripe for potential, and with their tics and secret language, Lukas and Elias are used to perfection here

Low Points

Not that there's anything wrong with this, but I do find it impossible to not get this title confused with the very different but weirdly wonderful Lifetime movie Don't Wake Mommy. Such is my plight

Lessons Learned

In Austria, an unlocked door is an open invitation for Red Cross volunteers to enter your home

Never apply crazy glue if you don’t have an exit plan

If you really want your kids to leave you alone, you might want to invest in a nanny or all-access cable system. I know there's a modern way to raise your kids and all, but you may only be hurting yourself in the end

Rent/Bury/Buy

Goodnight Mommy is a weirdly haunting film, and I found it incredibly effective. Its slow pace may certainly turn some views off, while savvier ones than I will no doubt spot the twist before its rather hard-hitting reveal. You can find the film free on Amazon Prime and it’s well worth a watch.