Written and directed by Andy Fetscher. Starring Melika Foroutan, Bianca Nawrath, Stephan Luca, Otto Emil Koch, Paul Fassnacht, Anna Unterberger, Maxine Kazis, Louie Betton, Gerhard Bos and Eveline Hall.
Plot: Ella goes to her sister’s wedding with her two children in tow and then must save her entire family from murderous old people.
The beginning of the movie is actually the middle of the movie as well. It opens with the brutal murder of a young caregiver by the old man she’s visiting. Quite literally, outside of his apartment window, the world is on fire.
Earlier, before the murders start, we meet Ella (Foroutan). She is headed to her sister’s wedding with her teenage daughter, Laura (Nawrath), and her younger son, Noah (Koch). Laura doesn’t have a problem with her Aunt Sanna (Kazis) or her fiance, but she is angry with her mother for leaving her father, Lukas (Luca). But Lukas is already with someone new, a woman named Kim (Unterberger), so obviously he’s at least partly to blame.
After arriving in town, Ella and Sanna take Noah to see his grandfather, their father, Aike (Fassnacht). The home he’s living in is not great. Kim, Lukas’s new woman, works there. And Aike is a bit more than cantankerous. Still, they decide to take him to their house to attend the wedding. Granted, the house is quite close to the old folks home, but that turns out to not be such a good thing at all. When the wedding starts, the old people in the home can hear the music and they’re enjoying it a lot. That is, until this bitch nurse makes them close the windows just for shits and giggles. Which is when the carnage really begins.
The male Nurse Ratched gets killed by the old folks, the old folks then scatter, with many of them leaving the home altogether. Lukas and Kim even spot a patient of hers near their home, where he clearly should not be, but a crash down in the village below distracts them. Then, the fires we saw in the beginning of the movie start up. Sanna and her now husband are killed soon after that. An old man, sort of the leader of the elderly peeps, beats them both to death. It’s unfortunate and quite disturbing. And when Ella discovers their bodies, it is just so sad. Word of caution here though; it’s not the last utterly depressing thing you’re going to see.
Eventually, Ella, Laura, Noah, Lukas, Kim and Aike are all in the house together. While an elder himself, Aike seems to show a restraint the others don’t have. He warns the rest that the old people are coming. He even hides Noah from them, before leaving the house to join his aged community. I really want to tell you everything that goes on after this point, but I’m going to hold back. I love it though. I mean, I hate Kim and her almost causing the deaths of both Ella and Laura, but the story as a whole is one I find entertaining and certainly honest and important in it’s message.
So, what can I tell you? A lot of people die, young and old. It can get very graphic. Good news though, you see Aike again and he is once again helpful to his grandkids. DJ and I thought it was going to end one way, and thankfully, it ended even better. As the credits begin, we hear a voiceover from one of the survivors that is both sad and completely thought provoking. It sums up so many of the points this film was trying to convey. It’s genius. Nearly perfect. Powerful to a surprising degree. In saying that, I once again, do not understand what other people have watched.
Most of the reviews I’ve seen for this aren’t good (and I don’t want to come across as arrogant), but I’m convinced that a lot of people didn’t understand what this was trying to say. I love this kind of horror. I love when something so scary can also make you think and feel in such a courageous and crafty way. The motive is where the power really lies, but the story is also original and satisfying and hopeful. The innovation was crazy good. The rules it laid out were followed. It was so, so, realistic. The effects are sufficiently creepy. The cast goes above and beyond to display understandable and even reasonable reactions. It’s so memorable and it has stayed with both of us for months and months. There is nothing inside of me that doesn’t recommend this movie, not just for the October season, but for all seasons. There are life lessons here that everyone should bear witness to.
My score: 94. DJ’s score: 89.
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