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There are horror
movies. You know, hide your eyes scary
movies. Films with slashers. Films with
hideous creatures that give you nightmares.
Oh, and don’t forget those spooky films that deliver atmosphere; chills. We all love a good a scare from time to time!
And then there are films
like German writer/director David Wnendt’s Combat Girls. A truly terrifying film to watch … it’s the
kind of film that sends shivers down your spine. A bit of cinema that attacks your senses and
rubs your emotions raw — it’s Romper Stomper, A Clockwork Orange and
more.
Artsploitation Films has
tabbed July 9 as the DVD debut date for this German-language import (with
English subtitles) that is absolutely guaranteed to creep you out.
Since 2011 Combat
Girls has been working the European film festival circuit and scored
wins for Best Picture, Best Actress or Best Director at nearly every stop along
the way. With those wins came a ton of rave reviews ...
and buzz, lots of buzz.
So why is Combat
Girls a scary film? What Wnendt
delivers rings incredibly true and therein frames the terror; the horror comes
in asking how can this be?
Alina Levshin (in a
breakout performance) plays Marisa, a wannabe Neo-Nazi, living in what used to
be East Germany, but now a united Germany.
She’d be an attractive young woman (maybe 20; a little older perhaps),
but the tattoos, hair and clothing choices, coupled with her rudely violent
social behavior makes her anything but.
She is the kind of person that you despise on sight; eye contact is
avoided.
Levshin, an unknown
talent in the domestic arena, but Best Actress wins at the German Film Awards, German
Film Critics Association Awards, Munich Film Festival and the São Paulo
International Film Festival (among others) will not keep her below the radar
for long. No one knew of Franka Potente
around here before Run Lola Run … Combat Girls is that kind of movie;
one that launches a career.
She gives an incredible
performance as a young woman who lives and breathes a culture of hate and violence.
But strangely, as the
film progresses, Wnendt deals us some cards that cast her and her life choices
in a slightly different light. Not
black and white, but filled with shades of gray. How she got to where she is at is slowly
revealed and we — as the audience — actually hope that she finds her way out of
the dark place that she is in.
She hangs with a group of
skinheads; thugs, who take pleasure in making themselves known and felt.
Sandro (Gerdy Zint) is more or less the
leader of the pack.
Their relationship
is built on hate and violence, the sex is raw … drugs are plentiful.
An unlikely newcomer
arrives — a catalyst that ultimately drives the film to its “inevitable”
conclusion — in the form of a young teen named Svenja (Jella Haase). She’s smart, comes from a reasonably well-off
family environment and is right near the top of her class at school.
She’s a child, just
barely past puberty, who suddenly finds herself as much an outcast as those who
run with Sandro and Alina — they are today’s “droogs,” no different from Alex
and his mates from four decades earlier.
With the young girl now
taken in by Alina, changes in the dynamics of the group are set in motion
that can only lead — in their tightly-wound world of anger, violence and hatred
— to tragedy. Combat Girls is not for
the faint of heart … a horror tale to be sure.
