Month: June 2025

I have kept up the Century of Cinema challenge (this film will indeed be number 45), though most of the films I’ve been watching for it are rewatches I previously covered on my old film blog that I didn’t think needed new reviews (I think I’ve only done 32 new ones, though I will get back onto some previously unseen stuff soon). Also, most of these have been films I liked before and still do (hi Mad Foxes, you magnificent piece of hyper-Eurotrash); Angst, on the other hand, I hated on first viewing in 2012. I have, mind you, learned a couple of things about it since then: one, the astounding cinematography is by Zbigniew Rybczynski, which I didn’t know before but certainly helps explain why it looks Like That (seriously, there are points after the killer enters the house where you’re not sure at first if you’re looking at a floor, a wall or a ceiling cos the angles are so mad); and two, there’s actually two versions of the thing, one with a prologue the director shot after the distributors in Austria said it was a bit short, and the other without it which I gather is his preferred version. I no longer remember which one I saw in 2012, but went for the shorter one tonight.

Angst was banned in lots of countries (probably including this one, though I can’t find evidence either way), being a serial killer film based on a real case and kind of purporting to show what it’s “really like” (especially the cleaning up afterwards). I still don’t think it’s actually as violent as a lot of other films even of that era, there’s only three killings and only one of those is really bloody (though it is really bloody, to be sure), and I still think it’s the, ah, other thing the killer does with that one which really pushes it over the edge. And I had completely forgotten the killer’s internal monologue throughout the film, though I don’t think it adds much anyway. My main problem with the film first time round was that I just thought it was utterly blank, and the killer is impossibly dull, and maybe that was the point—i.e. real murderers are much less interesting than fictional ones—but if so the film left bugger all to be interested in. Far too little happens to justify the length even of the shorter cut. So it looks like I do indeed still hate Angst, and a third viewing will not be required at any point.

There’s always a potential issue with films (or stories in general, really) that rely on a significant revelation or plot twist, etc, which is, obviously, can you still watch the film when you know what said twist is. Psycho, for example. What must it have been like for its early readers/viewers who didn’t know about “Mother”? How does that foreknowledge change your viewing, your experience of the film? How does knowing the answer to a mystery affect a film? Cos obviously there must be cases where it doesn’t, otherwise no film would be rewatchable, a good film has to be good even when you know how it all ends… but it can’t work all the time, I suppose, and alas, I think tonight’s viewing was one of the latter cases.

I last saw High Tension whenever it came out here on DVD, so that must’ve been, what, 2004 or 2005, at which time I was aware that it had a plot twist (though not what it was) and that it had been quite contentious amongst fans and critics. Did it work? Did it not? I wasn’t sure then, but I do recall being less bothered by it than a lot of people seemed to have been; now, in 2025, on a second viewing, I’m rather more sure that it doesn’t. Rewatching the film, there are some aspects that I didn’t really pick up on first time round which now stood out a bit more cos I knew what was coming, and I don’t think that really helped it… it’s a reasonably simple slasher-type plot, but the twist involves the identity of the killer, who is not who we’re lead to believe, and with hindsight I really don’t think it works and I found it a lot harder to swallow. So yeah, a kind of disappointing revisit.