Wonderful character development!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Highly Overrated But Still Good

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

"Masks" is a German movie from 2011, so this one in the German language is already more than five years old. It runs for roughly 110 minutes and is among the more recent works by writer and director Andreas Marschall. This is the story of a young ambitious acting student who gets involved with a very dangerous link to the past. This one is about acting teacher Matteusz Gdula, a man who invented his own acting technique back in the day that had terrible consequences, not only for him, but also for his students. So there are more than just a few flashbacks in this one, even if the main character is without a doubt Susan Ermich's Stella. Chances are high you never heard of her as an actress and even I haven't. Same can be said about all the supporting players in here basically, the younger or the older. I see that the guy who plays the acting teacher regularly works with Helge Schneider. Good for him. As for Ermich, I thought she was pretty fine overall probably, definitely elevated the material at times and with this I am not just referring to the scenes when we see her topless. Sadly, this is not the case for all the actors in here. Some of the supporting players feel very stale, especially in their line delivers. Sadly, there is always a danger of something like this to happen in horror movies as the money frequently goes to effects rather than performers.Anyway, I think the film may be slightly too long for its own good. The longer it goes, the shoddier it becomes in terms of the script and focus. It is still kinda interesting early on with the introduction to the characters and the link to the past. The scene that actually involves the masks is also fairly decent, even if I am generally not too big on jump scares. But the weirdness and absurdity makes it work somehow. Afterward when the danger becomes much more human and not really that much about mysterious possibly supernatural elements anymore, the film is really extremely underwhelming. I found this especially disappointing as the build-up early on wasn't bad at all, also with the mysterious killings about people getting stabbed. All in all, it is a relatively generic horror movie. Not bad, but also nowhere near the best of the genre of the 2010s. There are weaknesses in story-telling as it is sadly so often the case with this genre, some nudity, even a slightly lesbian scene, a killer, lots of mystery, hot young girls, relatively incompetent males and in the center of it all a hot young blonde who is the key to all the mystery and strangely enough never gets focused by the killer(s), so she survives mysteriously until the very end. Will she also survive the film itself? Watch for yourself. Or don't if you are not into horror films. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

Accustomed to being rejected by acting academies, the ambitious but talent-free Stella is elated upon learning she's been accepted into the Gdula School whose imposing edifice has a wing that was boarded up after the institute's founder committed suicide back in the '70s. Matteusz Gdula had perfected a dangerous "method" guaranteed to make an actor "shine" but only a select few are permitted to learn its secrets by entering the abandoned wing. The last student chosen emerged after a week and performed "like Hepburn" before she mysteriously disappeared and now Stella's been asked if she'd like to learn... Director Andreas Marschall takes his lead from Dario Argento and MASKS does for acting school what "The Maestro Of The Macabre" did for dance class in SUSPIRIA even though the horror here is giallo-esque rather than supernatural. Like its inspiration, the film is "style over substance" all the way but that style is the director's own and a potent one it is, too, with impressive cinematography accompanied by an ominous score filled with foreboding. The abrupt WTF ending comes as a shock but it makes one think about all that's gone before and works rather well in retrospect. The overall premise is similar to the director's previous TEARS OF KALI (2004) where former members of the Taylor-Eriksson group, a cult that tampered with a terrifying type of transcendental meditation, can't escape their killer karma in three loosely woven tales involving exorcism, psychotherapy, and an insane asylum. Both films are very effective low-budget shockers with judicious -albeit explicit- use of gore fx. Masks won "Best Horror Film" and (ironically) "Best Actress" awards at the 2011 Paris International Fantastic Film Festival, the 2011 Morbido International Film Festival, and the 2011 Fright Nights Horror Film Festival.

I saw this movie tonight at "Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre XIII" Horror and Fantastic Film Festival here in Argentina.I knew what the movie was about, and the remembrance of the Italian horror classic Suspiria it bears, but the truth is this movie takes it to another level and will blow you with the quality accomplished.The story is about a girl who's dream is to became an excelling actress and enters an acting school founded by a controversial acting teacher of the 70's. There, she discovers that the forbidden training method used by the already late Gdula hasn't been forgotten entirely... and so have its horrors.To sum up, this movie has great shots and the exact amount of gore needed to enjoy a well balanced Italian horror movie, plus an Excellent soundtrack that take you to the place of the protagonist more than once.So if you are in for a great Italian horror tribute, don't forget to check this one out.

The movie looks pretty good and the work that has gone into the art department is quite a feet, especially considering the budget. On the other hand, the director tells us, that some of the equipment were borrowed from schools (art schools for the masks). Still you have to respect the choices that were made. It's obvious what this movie is paying homage too and in general terms it succeeds.The story does have some issues, but if you're a fan of Giallo, you know that story was never something that people paid too much attention to. Character flaws and other things might spoil your fun, otherwise you will get a nice little horror movie with neat effects