Disturbing journey to a very dark place

Rating: 9/10 (12 November 2014)

Michael Haneke spent more than ten years on this production, which explains why every little detail about this movie is right. From the first frame on this movie grips you with its bare-bones style and unbearable silence. There's no music, long stretches without dialogue, most scenes only use natural lighting so the screen often goes black, but none of that is needed to generate an intensely powerful suspense. This is mostly due to the excellent child actors, who put in very effective performances. You feel sorry for them, but at the same time they're very ominous. Haneke's message seems to be that suppression only leads to more suppression, a scary basic idea that makes for a very frightening film. Rightful winner of the Palm d'Or, and I'm pretty sure it only got snubbed for the Best Foreign Film Oscar because several judges later admitted to never even having seen the movie.