Horrific and Spellbinding

Rating: 9/10 (21 November 2010)

It takes a good forty-five minutes before this film grabs you but when it does it just will not let you go. It took this viewer some time to recognize the subtle tensions as they exist behind the closed doors of the rooms and houses of this German village, partly because these tensions, anxieties, etc., are -until near the end of the film- almost oblivious to our good Samaritan narrator. In retrospect, when I say "behind the closed doors" I mean so almost literally as household, bedroom, barn and other doors, gates, fences, etc., (open, closed and/or in the act of opening or closing) appear so frequently in this film that I can't help but wonder if such were not intentional. This is filmmaking at its best.