Antibodies

Look what came out of Germany this time. Normally we get hold of those gory splatters or even their xxx gory ones. But i noticed in my Fangoria vault and on the web that there was more and better coming a few years ago. Antibodies. First of all, again like most German flicks they speak, you guessed it, German. Mostly without subs but this one does have them. So the language is never a problem. It's a slow movie that clocks in over more than 2 hours but don't worry, you will never be bored. The difference between the "Holy"wood movies and this one is that they dare to have a serial killer killing children and what he did with them is all told in an explicit way. For some it will be disturbing, and that's the main difference with the US movies. Se7en and Silence of the Lambs were never disturbing except for the killers. But here we have more, it tells a story about a serial killer who only wants to talk to a small cop meaning nothing in Berlin. What he has to do with killer will be explained further on in the movie. But the guys who are playing the killer and the cop are sublime. The way the cop becomes victim of the killer and how he translate that in his belief in Christ. A must see. I must admit that you will get the plot halfway into the movie but you want to be sure that it is correct that's the reason to watch it until the end. Strange for this kind of flicks but no gore is added, you will see some blood but I can tell it get you by the throat due the child abuse and killings done by him. For me as a horror geek I surely advise people to see this underrated movie, and yes, in 2010 or dearest American folks are making a remake. Do I need to say more?

I watched the DVD last night and thought it to be one of the best movies I've seen this year. The acting from the leads was excellent - never overdone and highly believable. The opening sequence gripped me and from thereon in I couldn't wait to see what happened next. The story develops at a great pace with some lovely twists and red herrings. Yes - some may see them coming but even so, it doesn't detract from a hugely enjoyable and often disturbing story. The direction and cinematography was also were superb - some great camera work and use of (sometimes washed out and grainy) colour and slow-motion. Highly recommended viewing before the inevitable Hollywood treatment. (CGI deer - ouch - 'nuff said!)

This film lasts just over two hours, and the first hour and fifty five minutes are fine. A German serial killer, whose hobby is raping boys and using their blood to paint pictures, is apprehended but refuses to give much away under interrogation. A policeman travels to the city hoping to question the killer about the murder of a young girl in the village where he lives. The prisoner responds to him but demands to be told about the cop's family and his sex life before he'll answer questions. All good gritty stuff, but it's all ruined by an incredibly tame ending. Christian Alvart (Pandorum) wrote and directed, and I have to believe he was pressured to alter his original script. After multiple pedophile homosexual rapes and murders, the god-fearing village cop's introduction to anal sex with a friendly lady, and inflicting sodomy on his wife when he gets home, drawing blood in the process, Herr Alvart must have known that 'happily ever after' wasn't the way to go.

The great thing about this movie is that it is not a true horror film. The director said in the Q&A after the movie that he didn't want his killer to be respected, like Hannibal, who he says "looks like the cool guy in the movie". He says that since he is locked up the whole time the audience can be sure that there will be no more murders and so most of the movie is talking and trying to create closure. The movie is very much a focus on the minds of normal people versus what happens to the make a normal person turn into a serial killer. Alvart did a lot of research for the movie on serial killers, Catholocism (spending months working in a church), and being a father, there is a lot on parent-child relationships. There are so many levels that are covered in this movie and that is why it is so engrossing and watchable. It is a totally intellectual film that makes you think about social issues as well as completely scaring and creeping you out. The ending was so amazing. It is the best thriller I have ever seen and no one would ever think that Alvart was the most skeptical of this script ever being produced.Alvart said this film is the most personal out of the many scripts he proposed to producers.

Only the second film by the former editor of the legendary German movie fanzine X-TRO, Antibodies (aka: Antikörper) is an assured and suspenseful work which, while it willingly acknowledges its obvious indebtedness to Hollywood models, still manages to strikes out convincingly on its own. The most obvious inspiration behind Christian Alvart's film is The Silence Of The Lambs (1991), to which explicit and grimly affectionate allusion ("What did you expect? Hannibal Lecter?") is made by killer Gabriel Engel (André Hennicke) at one point early on during his captivity. Restrained in conditions which recall those featuring in Jonathan Demme's movie, visited too by a similarly awed and repelled police investigator, Engel actually gives a performance less self-conscious than the much-imitated Anthony Hopkins'. And, because of the latitude of German cinema, where the precise detailing of paedophilic lust rape is more permissible as a drama demands, it is all the more disturbing in the telling. Watching this film, where the principal and community are wracked equally with guilt and blame, one easily recalls that this is the national cinema which earlier produced another monstrous child murderer, that of Fritz Lang's M, and indeed is a country where communal guilt is never very far below the surface.

Just as Clarice Starling needs her Lecter, so Schmizt needs his Engel to help solve a case. Having already killed 14, most of whom were young boys, Engel offers his own tantalising clues and hints as to where the other killer may be found. But, as he says, "Evil... is infectious," and soon Schmizt begins to question his own moral certainties, before ultimately basing his judgement on the only firm foundation he knows - the Old Testament, a process which involves a particularly painful scene of self mutilation by way of penance, as well as providing doctrinal justification for the suspenseful final scenes.

Antibodies is a film which never slackens its tension, and which avoids completely the flabby sentimentalising or overcooked heroics which often mars the American thriller product. Silence Of The Lambs contained more certainties than we are provided with here. Even though it gave its audience an extreme form of serial killer, in the form of 'Buffalo Bill', one both flamboyant and rock inspired, it instantly made a stereotype of itself, and it was this 'respect' of sorts by the audience that the director has said he was keen to avoid. Like Silence Of The Lambs, Se7en and the rest of their bloodline, Antibodies parades a notable killer's lair of its own as well, although any artefacts on show are less disturbing than the ultimate meaning of the 14 red squares drawn by Engel on the wall, or the spare, clean white tiles of his torture room.

At the centre of such films is inevitably a duel between killer and cop, and here the two main parts receive terrific performances, Hennicke mightily disturbing as the gloating and manipulative serial killer, writing his books of blood, and Reedus drawn and haunted as the cop on the edge. As is often the case in this sort of film, a troubled parallel is drawn between them, a process highlighted in the first instance by a change in Reedus' lovemaking, as one whose psyche is increasingly affected by the killer's manipulative mind games. And when the depressed cop buys a suit on impulse, from a shop woman with whom he later sleeps in aggressive fashion, we are reminded of how moral codes can be put and 'worn' almost as one would clothes, until one "can't tell where the suit ends and the man begins." But by the same mark are never the less separate, and can be peeled back to reveal the real creature underneath, or changed at will.

The signs that accompany the disturbed personality are more than just at that mundane level however. We are reminded in this film of the "'Holy Trinity' of serial killers: playing with fire, tormenting animals and bed-wetting" - some signs of which the tortured cop discovers, with growing alarm, occurring within his own family. As mentioned above, a strong religious thread runs through the film, of which this is only another aspect. Schmizt's family are devoted church-going folk, bible quotations play an especial significance and at one point the cop seeks to make his confession. But God's benign influence is ultimately conspicuous by its absence rather than influence, the final resolution less due to any supernatural grace than human doubt. In fact, in interview, director Alvart has expressed his serial killer in terms of the criminal representing 'total doubt', whilst drawing a parallel between religious fanaticism and the extremes of criminal behaviour, each with their respective compulsions.

In short, Antibodies is well worth seeking out, as a serial killer film that's both thought provoking and reasonably gripping - and can also be taken as a possible antidote to Hannibal Rising. Alvart is clearly a talent to watch (his previous, and first film, Curiosity And The Cat (1999) was a little seen - at least in the UK - but well thought of suspense flick, that also featuring corroding suspicion and sadomasochistic overtones). One hopes to see more of his work.