Movie Review by EDF
Starring: Pietro Martellanza, Anja Gebel, Magdalena Ritter, Ludwig Nicole
Director: Andreas Marschall
For years, American horror movies have ruled the roost with the Japanese coming up with some interesting concepts during the last ten years. When you think about European horror, Hammer Horror and Dario Argento come to mind but what about horror movies from other countries?
In the mid eighties, several communes and self-experience groups were established in Poona, India. Many of those did not accept any limits in their experiments. Some went way too far. This is a three-story movie with a common thread running throughout.
The first story is called SHAKTI. Opening up with a scene that resembles something like the present state of the British National Health Service, a young woman staring into the darkness of her soul is asked to see the light by which she cuts off her own eyelids. At a psychiatric hospital in Berlin, Tansu Yilmaz (Nuran Celik), a writer, is interviewing Elisabeth Steinberg (Irena-Holiaba Jandris) about the events that led to the murder of her therapist Samarphan (Joey Bozat), who is also Elisabeth’s husband. Elisabeth claims that she had asked the young, charismatic Keoma (Peter Domsch) to kill her husband so why did his body look like it was attacked by a wild beast?
Samarphan had learnt some techniques that had him reaching the deepest level of the human soul. He used this to bring out the darkness from people’s souls. Elisabeth claims that when this failed on Keoma, he took it out on his mentor and is still at large. Yilmaz claims that Keoma never existed and the technique that they were using created phantoms, one of which killed Samarphan. Yilmaz reveals that she is in fact Samarphan’s little sister and attacks Elisabeth so as to force the phantom into the open. Will Yilmaz succeed and survive?
The second story is DEVI. Robin Borg (Marcel Trunsch), a former convict, is advised to go on a rehabilitation social therapeutic course run by Dr Steiner (Michael Balaun). Steiner tells Borg to lie down on the couch and recount his troubles. Steiner attacks Borg to the point of temporarily paralysing him and Borg wakes up a while later with the room covered in plastic. Steiner believes that the first sentence in the therapy session is what the treatment should be. What did Borg say at the start of the session and can he convince Steiner that he has changed his ways?
The third story is called KALI. Edgar Cornelson (Mathieu Carriere), a faith healer cures Mira (Cora Chilcott) of her back problem by driving away a phantom that she was carrying on her shoulders. The phantom later attacks and kills Edgar’s assistant Tilda (Vroni Kiefer) and now wants to inhabit Mira again. They escape the attacking phantom by locking themselves in a storage room but with the phantom lurking outside, how can they possibly escape?
The thing that links all three stories is the mysterious Taylor Eriksson Group. In SHAKTI, why does Eriksson pick Kim, the only naked person in the room? Looks like I just answered my own question there. As for DEVI, all I can say is that Borg’s treatment looks like something from a Robbie Williams video but is less entertaining without the music. At times, the camera work and the scares play like old fashioned Hammer House movies and is about as frightening as an average episode of THE X FILES. There are some entertaining ideas within each story but they could have been executed better. Due to this, TEARS OF KALI plays like a TV movie but with graphic horror moments.
