Film Review: Video Geisteskrank (2008)

SYNOPSIS:

After watching a series of notorious shock films, our lead falls into the life of murder and mayhem. Slowly but surely his mind is in a world of his own as he keeps a girl in his bathroom to torture.

REVIEW:

A black and white movie plays on as a young boy sits down to view some “so-called” extreme films that inspire him into a life of violence. With a checklist in hand, he heads out with an agenda which includes checklist points such as “kill hitcher” and “puke of 2 innocent girls”. From what I could tell from this unspoken title card designed film, the boy is using the film content to influence his sudden directive of actions. He obtains a pig mask which he wears while taking captive a young girl who arrives at his door collecting donations for breast cancer. She is made to ingest a condom full of razor blades and then soon after tortured with the old “fingernails pulled from the tips” gag. The nastier bits arrive in the cutting of her tongue and an unwarranted nail to the head (sorry ..nails to the head). This event, which seems isolated, becomes another checkpoint for our misguided teen.

Our antagonist motivation appears to be driven from this checklist which ends on the unnerving “rape dead child in a bathtub” list item (of which cuts to credits).

“Video Geisteskrank” is amateur shot but does use some interesting compositional framing through out. This 19 minute short (from Freakface Pictures aka Film Bizarro Productions) is effective in its use of black and white kept footage that gives it a certain classic feel. While it may lessen some of the bloodier scenes, it still makes an impact with its intentional narrative purpose. Like many of these extreme horror shorts, it delivers its venom without purpose other than “shock impact”. By the time of this review, it’s a pretty good guess that some of these scenes are becoming old hat with the increased horror movement of extremism in the genre.

As in any of these, its all fictional but implied which means somewhere, someone is thinking of these things to do or shoot for entertainment value. Will you find it here? Well I certainly hope not, for the sake of keeping some things taboo. The piece was directed and written by Ronny Carlsson who also stars as the young teen. Carlsson shows promise is his camera eye, if only he could focus his thoughts on lighter subjects.

Video Geisteskrank (2008)