Angst
Angst
| 01 January 1983 (USA)
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A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.

Reviews
Softwing

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Salubfoto

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Robert Joyner

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

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Lidia Draper

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

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duccshmucc

The whole movie was a guy going to a house, killing 3 people and getting caught a coffee shop while he tells boring stories about his childhood. i was almost entertained when he stabbed the girl 45 mins into the movie that was it. its runtime is filled by nothingness like him changing his clothes, walking around, washing in the sink etc. i saw this movie was related to actually good movies and had a higher score than horror films i enjoyed but that was pure deception. i guess this actually happened but they presented the story so uninterestingly.

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MitchellCombden

Angst (1983) is one of my favourite horror films of all time. This very disturbing German horror picture is a true gem. The camera work for me is one of the many things that make this film so great. The camera feels very over the shoulder and gets you up close and personal with the disturbing events that take place. Plenty of facial shots also really capture the essence of the main character. It's honestly not hard to tell the man is mentally disturbed. The actor who plays the main character is beyond perfect in the role, looking very sly and demented. Plus the narration that this character gives us throughout the whole movie is simply pure evil. I felt as if I was watching a real life serial murder happen before my eyes, which is exactly what makes this film so disturbing. It's not heavy on gore and nudity but the manner in which it was filmed and narrated is definitely disturbing to me. since the film at it's core is a character study that follows a deeply disturbed serial killer, there isn't much of a plot here. this however doesn't detract from the film it really just strengthens it. you feel far more immersed in the character and his thoughts because there is no plot for you to pay attention to. this makes for a very real and in depth character study about a mentally unstable man. topped off by excellent casting and acting. All that's left for me to say is, go watch it. You will not be disappointed!The verdict: 10/10 a perfectly disturbing masterpiece

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chaos-rampant

Word on the street is this is a super intense, gruelling, claustrophobic serial killer film. They're not lying. But it's important to get to note why, especially in this case: why this type of violence enthralls so much? And I mean apart from any particular on-screen nastiness. More virulent films have been made, much nastier. Why this fascinates is a completely different beast than say, something like Hostel. It's the easiest thing to make us cringe and shy away, but to fervently want to keep watching?The popular opinion is this works so well exactly because of how contained and straight-forward. There are no distractions from the concentrated moment we first encounter: a inmate giving himself a shave on his day of parole. There are no allusions to anything else but private madness and nothing to escape to for comfort or respite, except perhaps sheer exhaustion. This man is going to go on a crime spree again as soon as he's out of prison, we can tell this much. We can tell it's going to unravel the way we secretly hope it does.Well, this is fine and makes some sense. But doesn't adequately explain to my mind. No, why this works so viscerally - and ties in with other interests of mine in film - I believe has all to do with the cinematic eye.Now most films operate on the assumption that you want to experience a world as real as possible. Every advance in cinematic technology - sound, color, the recent fad of 3D - is a step in that direction. We want to escape more vividly and more urgently than ever. And what most films do to abet that escape is to let loose a few threads of story and place, hopefully open enough if we are in caring hands, that we can be trusted to attach ourselves from own experience. The tighter the weave of the threads from that point on, the closer we are lassoed to the cinematic world. Editing and camera are assigned invisible ways; they have to work without us getting to notice.The Soviets changed all that very early in the game. Here a very world was assembled by the eye. There was no story, it was all a matter of calligraphic (dynamic overlapping) watching. Welles, and less famously Sternberg before him, unpacked these notions by letting it fall on the eye of the camera to join fragments together.(this particular eye was first conceived by the Buddhist but that's another story altogether).Now this is rumored to be the DP's project working under an alias, a Polish man who knows the camera. The opening shot exhibits masterful knowledge of Welles; a crane shot that establishes location by joining together many different planes of perspective. It would have been a film to watch with just this mode, that others like Argento and DePalma exercised in adventurous flourishes of spatial exploration.It's actually a little more elaborate than that. We have two eyes instead of the one. The first is the killer's eye, tightly screwed and always at eye-level as he prowls around. Interior monologue plays out in voice-over, itself taken from the diaries of an actual killer, and meant to recast everything as internal space: victims are an invalid, an old woman and her daughter, each one mapping to a person that deeply wounded in the past as we find out. So we have exceedingly tormented soul spilled out and contorting physical space, very much like Zulawski practiced. Another Pole, another piece of the puzzle.The second eye you will notice is always mounted on a crane and pulled upwards in steep ascends. A bird's eye far removed from human madness, which is the Buddhist eye of woodblock prints. To the film's credit, and this is a lot of its power for me, it remains abstract enough that we may use this perspective as we are inclined: is it a godless and uncaring or a merciful eye, pulling us from the carnage or skipping to the next?

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cwarne_uk

"Angst" seems to have picked up some interest since Gaspar Noe singled it out for praise. It is more interesting than Noe's pretentious films, but fall far short of being a lost masterpiece. The plot is simple as a killer released from prison feels an unbearable urge to kill again, eventually picking on a family in a large house in the woods. There is very little dialogue but a voice-over by the killer provides his background, unfortunately rather than providing an insight into his mind this is mostly sub-Freudian gibberish (not surprising in an Austrian film, and yes he does blame his mother!). Erwin Leder has been praised for his role but really all he has to do is look bug eyed for most of the film. Kargl shoots the film informatively but he lacks any narrative skill and completely mishandles the killings - they look more laughable than anything. The only scene that develops any tension is early on in a café and involves eating a sausage!. That Kargl never directed again is really no surprise. To sum up an interesting one for exploitation fans but not really worth seeking out for anyone else. (True crime fans may note that some elements of the film are similar to the later case of Jack Unterweger).

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