Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 29, 2019

For those of you who may have picked up The Witch 4K when it was released a week or two ago, you might want to consider making a “double feature” out of it and another film that was similarly released on home media on April 19 (even if took this particular screener a while to get to me), a fascinating entry from Austrian born Lukas Feigelfeld, who makes a rather audacious feature film debut with Hagazussa (an Old German term for “witch”). The film’s underlying “magical” element as well as what some will probably consider a fairly glacial pace may tie it rather strongly to similar aspects in The Witch, but Hagazussa, which also bears the subtitle A Heathen’s Curse, is a much more hallucinatory viewing experience, one that is comprised of long swaths where not one word of dialogue is uttered, and where a frankly pretty psychedelic sound design adds to the “trippy” factor of it all.

There’s a feeling of dread and ominous portent almost from the get go in this film, even when events being depicted seem relatively mundane. Some of this subliminal fear is due no doubt to a pulsing, droning score by MMMD that revels in LFE and adds a doom laden atmosphere to events. Such is the case in an opening vignette which seems to be nothing more than a mother (Claudia Martini) out playing in the snow with her young daughter Albrun (Celina Peter) in an unspecified feudal community in the 15th century. Sometime later (time is a pretty amorphous entity in this film), Albrun and her mother are walking home in a forest, when they’re accosted by a kind of scrungy looking old man who warns of evil spirits who are supposedly afoot because it’s Twelfth Night. It’s a kind of odd comment (I personally have never heard of any “malevolent” intent assigned to this particular holiday), but it again creates a whole feeling of foreboding, one that seems to be realized when a bunch of people basically do whatever the medieval version of “egging a house” is at the home of little Albrun and her mother, with the clear implication being that the pair themselves is seen as evil by the superstitious folk in the area.

When the mother seems to increasingly succumb to a plague like illness, Albrun is subjected to some really bizarre behavior from her supposed protector, with one such instance being directly tied to Albrun getting her period for the first time. It’s all very outré, while at the same time being surprisingly discursive, but it’s also undeniably unsettling. Suffice it to say the the mental and physical degradation of Albrun’s mother results in her eventual death, leaving Albrun alone in the world. The film then rather weirdly segues forward a couple of decades to find the now grown Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen, whose face and manner reminded me very much of Renée Jeanne Falconetti in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc) tending goats while nursing (literally and figuratively) her own baby, though there’s absolutely no sign of a male anywhere on the premises. This is another potential plot hole that is left completely unexplained, but perhaps due to the almost dreamlike, folktale like ambience of the film, it barely seems to register, let alone matter.

If at least some things have changed, the “villagers” (even though no actual “village” is really portrayed) still seem to look upon Albrun with suspicion and dismissal. That makes a seeming offer of friendship from a local named Swinda (Tanja Petrovskij) probably more than welcome, but it turns out Swinda’s motives are not entirely pure, leading to a shocking vignette later in the film. But even that pales in comparison to some of the developments involving Albrun and her little baby, events which won’t be documented here other than to say they up the “unease” factor considerably.

Hagazussa doesn’t really aim for a rationally logical narrative, and indeed part of its allure and dare I say power is its almost Id driven momentum, one spiced liberally with a certain psychedelic element (Albrun likes to munch on those “magic mushrooms” you can find out in the wild). The film plays out in long, almost trance inducing, takes where imagery can suddenly morph and a “dream world” seems to intrude into supposed real life happenings. For a film released by Music Box’s imprint Doppelgänger, along with Bloody Disgusting Films, may lead some to believe that this is a gore infused horror outing, but shocking “blood and guts” imagery is really actually rather limited here. Instead, Hagazussa traffics more in a psychological terror, one that may seem to hint at issues of female empowerment, but which also seem to have something to say about the powerlessness of children.

Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Hagazussa is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Doppelgänger Releasing and Bloody Disgusting Films, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The closing credits roll has a generic Arri logo, but I'm not sure if that relates to camera rentals or not. That said, a bit of cursory Googling uncovered an #arrialexa hashtag on a post about the film, so I'll assume it was digitally captured at least in part with that camera, and then finished at a 2K DI. (This was a actually a student film by Feigelfeld and his cinematographer, Mariel Baqueiro.) The visual style here is a rather unique cross of elements that might be thought of as equal parts Ingmar Bergman-esque Scandinavian "wintry bleak" (especially in the first part of the film where Albrun is a little girl) and David Lynchian gonzo presentational aspects, but the bottom line is detail, sharpness and clarity are all excellent across the board here for the most part, aside from just a few very dark nighttime scenes where shadow detail can falter. The film has an unabashedly hallucinogenic quality a lot of the time, and that includes some deliberate tweaking of imagery, so detail levels can vary due to some of these techniques. But this is an often arresting looking film that offers a sometimes weirdly skewed palette but generally very impressive fine detail levels.

Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It may not rise to the level of discord (pun probably intended) that the score of the recently reviewed Keoma has engendered, but MMMD's moaning, droning score for Hagazussa may be a deciding element in how much you enjoy either the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track included on this disc. A lot of the score, along with a glut of sound effects which include a lot of things like almost menacing sounding winds, fills the surround track quite winningly, but there's no getting around the fact that the score itself is just kind of patently odd at times. The film has very little dialogue, but what is here is rendered cleanly and clearly. The ubiquity of ambient environmental effects really sets this film apart from a sound design standpoint, and the surround track in particular offers some very nicely wrought recreations of outdoor environments.

Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Selected Scene Director Commentary (1080p; 34:34) offers a quartet of sequences, playable either separately or as a group, with commentary by Feigelfeld.


• Deleted Scene (1080p; 2:38) also features an optional commentary by Feigelfeld.


• MMMD Music Video (1080p; 6:29)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:56)


• Interferenz (1080p; 48:33) is a short (or at least shorter) film by Lukas Feigelfeld.

Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Hagazussa may not make a whale of a lot of "sense" in the traditional, well, sense of that word, but it's a really fascinating viewing experience, one with a near hypnotic power that augurs well for Lukas Feigelfeld. Technical merits are first rate, and Hagazussa comes Highly recommended.