Dungeon Girl

Dungeon Girl (2008)

** (out of 4)

My never ending parade of German director Ulli Lommel's "real life" movies continues with this one, which steps away from the horror genre and enters the drama category. This one tells a story that happened in Austria as a young girl was kidnapped and held hostage by a man for nearly six years. The entire running time centers on voiceovers as the girl tells her feelings for her parents, her life before the abduction and for her kidnapper known only as The Stranger. Again, I've seen all of Lommel's "real life" movies that have been released so far and this one here took me by a pleasant surprise. Not that I'd ever sit through the thing again but at least Lommel tried something different and didn't just deliver the same old garbage. I think what really helps this film is Wendi Jean Linn as the girl and Gunther Ziegler as The Stranger. We really don't get to see them "act" since most of the film is structured around voiceovers but this is beneficial since the majority of Lommel's recent films have been even worse due to the bad acting. Here, they at least look the parts well and the narration by Gwen Trevathan is really good. The film is way too slow and too much stuff is repeated for it to be considered a marginally good film. I'm really not sure what Lommel's obsession is with having a character look into the camera, ask questions and then constantly reuse this footage. Also, the running time of 81 minutes is the norm for his recent films but he might want to consider cutting them down to a hour or less. This is how "B" and "Z" movies were back in the day so he might want to revisit that. With that said, this is still a weak film but it's a lot better than anything the director's have given us over the past decade but then again, that's not saying too much.

I've seen many movies in my day, and many bad ones. "Dungeon Girl" must be the worst, easily.

There is simply nothing good to say about this production. The acting is appalling, the plot non-existent, and the music is beyond description.

Supposedly, the movie is about the abduction and captivity of Natascha Kampusch in Austria a few years ago.

The film starts with a strange mix of references to witches, and the repetition of the phrase "are you a witch"? I never realized exactly why this line keeps recurring throughout the film, which it does. In fact there are so many things in this movie which are left unexplained it's remarkable.

The "story" centers around the girl being held in a basement, or so the title suggests, although the basement seems to be in the attic. The kidnapper is very fond of masturbating with a doll, playing the guitar and singing in really bad German. Apart from this, he cooks soup and gives the girl chocolate. Mixed with this are some odd scenes of flashbacks from the girls' early life which only confuse the viewer.

Summary: A real stinker. Beware, though, the DVD has a rather deceptive cover which can trick you into renting it. Stay away from this one.

What a relief! I watched this on fear.net, so it was free.

I echo the sentiments of virtually every reviewer. This movie promised to be interesting by pretending to be based on the real case in Germany where the man held his daughter captive, molesting and even impregnating her multiple times.

This movie has NOTHING like the news story.

Long story, short....nothing happens in this movie. Yes, the guy kidnaps a girl and keeps her in his "house"? Apart from the rather mundane activities like cooking, playing guitar and reading a bible...there is no activities that contribute to the "plot"!!?? Annoying narration that explains nothing of the motivations by the protagonists. This makes Eraserhead look transparent! An absolute mess! It is incomprehensible how this ever got made or distributed.

There is honestly not much to say. The movie was simply very bad. Worst movie I have ever seen. Don't be fooled by the DVD or VHS cover because that is the only good thing of this whole package. The movie repeated itself all the time and when it wasn't boring, it was just confusing or making you wanna hit your head on the wall. Obviously the whole point of this movie was to give the viewer some sense of the all the feelings the girl was going through. The movie was trying to be very artistic. It failed miserably and only gave the audience a pure feeling of disappointment, frustration and wanting to throw the TV out from the window. If you love yourself, don't watch it.

This movie is an absolute disaster. It's a lurid melodrama with no sense of plot or purpose. Dungeon Girl is a truly awful movie, not worth the price of a rental. Avoid this at all costs, it's not even worth seeing even just for the sake of seeing how truly bad it is, unless you just happen to be in an extremely masochistic mood. That said, there's a directors commentary on there and since I've already made the mistake of renting the movie, I'm almost tempted to run through the movie again with the commentary playing just to try to figure out what the folks who made this mess of a movie were thinking. Or, at the very least, what they were smoking. I can't really add anything that hasn't already been said about this movie, but I did just want to add my voice to the warnings in the hopes that maybe somebody, somewhere, can save the price of the movie rental and put the 90 or so minutes of their lives they would have spent watching this movie to better use. I should have checked the reviews here before I rented the movie myself. Unfortunately, this seems fairly representative of the quality of movie Lionsgate is releasing these days. Move along, nothing to see here.