Luz

After watching the promising trailer, I had high hopes for Luz, expecting an intense horror experience reminiscent of atmospheric horror films from the 70s and 80s. Unfortunately, I was way off. The trailer managed to include all the genuinely horror-like scenes from the film, so beyond that, there's just a lot of talking. Essentially, Luz is a stylishly shot conversational horror about possession, but it's hard to grasp what's actually going on. Most of the film takes place in a single room, revolving around a bizarre reconstruction of an event through hypnosis, and that's where the story unfolds. The beginning looked promising, with the film attempting to build some tension, and for a while, I was hopeful it was heading somewhere and about to kick into high gear. But it never did. All my hopes quickly faded, giving way to sheer boredom. By the halfway mark, I had given up on it entirely and just wished for it to end. Apart from the excellent retro stylization, there's nothing much here to captivate genre fans – I can't even pinpoint what kind of audience this film would appeal to. One thing Tilman Singer did manage was to create a convincing time warp where 70 minutes felt like 2 long, tedious hours. (08/10/2018)

The German movie Luz is an example of an art-horror movie. Sure, it has a certain atmosphere, although that is not because of the horror element but rather how strangely the movie was shot. I can imagine this being shown in art house cinemas to a cult audience. As a horror fan, though, I did not find it particularly exciting and it was just a sort of experimental movie. (03/06/2020)