“The Devil’s Bath” - Film Review
Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s The Devil’s Bath opens with a sequence that is beyond bleak. A woman, for reasons we don’t understand until the credits roll in two hours, throws her baby over the edge of a waterfall. She confesses her crime and is killed in a manner that makes her an example to the rest of the townsfolk. It is the mid-eighteenth century in a secluded Austrian village surrounded by dark forests. This bleak, unforgiving landscape is the setting for a psychological horror story of religious fanaticism.
The day after the film’s inciting incident, Agnes (Anja Plaschg) is due to marry Wolf (David Scheid). He and his mother (Maria Hofstätter) have a pond that provides for their livelihood, and that’s where Agnes will be expected to work as his wife. From that first marital night, it’s clear there is no real love between Agnes and Wolf. He rebuffs all of her sexual advances and the town talks about how much of a burden Agnes is because she’s not yet pregnant. As things continue to decline between herself and Wolf, Agnes begins to sink into a depression that leads her down unforgiving paths. The Devil’s Bath title comes from an eighteenth-century term to describe someone who is experiencing depression, a fate that befalls Agnes and others.
courtesy of IFC
Fiala and Franz have made a name for themselves as a directing duo in the horror space. The Lodge (2019) is another bleak story about fanaticism that plays out through the point of view of the sole survivor of a cult group that committed mass suicide. Their 2014 film, Goodnight Mommy, was recently remade for English-speaking audiences with Naomi Watts. Fans of the duo’s previous works will likely be thrown off their feet as The Devil’s Bath begins. For the majority of the runtime, their newest film feels more like a miserable period piece than an outright horror film. Yes, the opening scene of the woman killing her child is jarring and upsetting, but there’s no sense of foreboding, no worry about witchcraft or supernatural elements afoot as one might expect going in.
The Devil’s Bath really plays with the idea of what is considered a horror movie. Do films need monsters, ghosts, and ghouls who wreak bloody havoc in order to be included in the genre? The Devil’s Bath would argue no. There are no beasts or demons, no monsters or witches, just people desperately grabbing at anything they can to make sense of their lives. This may be considered a spoiler, but the end credits reveal that the film is based on true events. How closely it follows these events is hard to say, given that the phenomenon the film is adapted from is three hundred years old, but The Devil’s Bath gives the impression that its feet are firmly on the ground. The things that should scare us the most are our fellow humans and the desperate actions they take when they fear the world is unraveling at the seams. People lean on religion, spirituality, and other means of community-building in order to preserve themselves. As much as humans desperately seek out one another, at the drop of a hat they will abandon everyone to save themselves. The Devil’s Bath is a punishing watch, one whose true horrors are only revealed as the credits begin to roll.
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