User Reviews

This movie would've gotten a higher score from me if it wasn't for the lame twist at the end. From a nice old fashioned ghost horror to run of the mill torture porn.

"Heilstätten" or "Fear Challenge" is a 1.5-hour German horror/thriller movie from 2018, so still relatively new and this one was directed and co-written by Michael David Pate. If you have heard the name, then you know what you are in for. He is the one who came up with the infamous Kartoffelsalat movie before that where he told a horror/zombie story involving some of Germany's most known Youtubers. And "most known" here means "most ruthless" and "most fake" too because the cast members were predominantly people who are known to the trained eye for product placement and tricking mostly young audiences into buying the stuff they advertize while fake-trying to convince everybody that these are the products they are really using. Their videos are scripted from beginning to end whil pretending for interesting and surprising stuff to happen, or in short these are exactly the Youtubers you don't want to watch and also you don't want your kids to watch. FreshTorge was the star in this older film and he is also in this new movie we have here, but really only very briefly early on most likely lying to people in some kind of publicity stunt to make this film more known I assume that he is really scared of/during horror movies. Some probably watched the film because of his name attached to the project, but if they were smart enough they switched the film off pretty quickly. Because all that followed afterwards was not good at all. The beginningw as already, but slightly tolerable. However, the "scarier" the film became, the worse it got too losing itself in infrared camera recordings that were supposed to add everything, but in fact added nothing in my opinion. Lets take a look at the cast. I must say I have no idea who the boys are if they are actual actors or more Youtube influencers. The girls are slightly more known. Gerhardt has appeared in some prestigious projects and she is somewhat the female lead. But I don't really see a lot of talent in her either, so don't think she is good only because she is better than the really weak rest. korol has been Tina in Buck's Bibi and Tina franchise, but her role here offers really nothing. I must say I was a bit surprised though about Gerhardt's looks. Don't have her as attractive in my mind, but the non-blonde hair suits her pretty well. But yeah, can you really blame her for not turning the role of a Youtube influencer/influenza into acting gold? It is an impossible challenge you could say, even if she tries her best. You can blame her though for accepting the role. Now as for the story, we have a bunch of young people travelling to Heilstätten, a location where Nazis dealt with people suffering from tuberculosis in the first half of the 20th century. So it is a dark place really, even if it sounds like a wellness town. But yeah, it is pretty disrespectful to make a garbage film like this on such a meaningful location, especially as they were taking itself really seriously making this movie here. It is never scary, it is never entertaining, it has never at least guilty pleasure potential. It is just plain bad. It is really tough to find anything positive about it. One thing you could mention is that it actually depicts influencers as fake to some extent, which did surprise me bit. There is one scene when we see her pretend to her fans that her boyfriend is her ex-boyfriend, so she seems single to them and probably attracts more male fans I don't know. There are 1 or 2 other references depicting that it is all make-believe and nothing you see is real and you will recognize them if you watch this film. But even there, Pate was far from being as bold as he could have been when elaborating on this subject. But that is no surprise obviously after shooting Kartoffelsalat and lets be honest here the irony is priceless already this way with him including stuff like that and then having FreshTorge in his cast who is probably top5 of the phonies here in Germany. Now back to the film, it is incredibly bland, uncreative and never a success. Skip it. Highly not recommended.

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

*Plot analyzed*

An extremely annoying video (not a film at all) with youth culture written all over it. A bunch of morons, with no redeeming qualities except to destroy, harass and elicit juvenile emotional responses from each other, form the 'meat and bones' of what we see. They spend some time at a "haunted hospital". Their puerile pranks get weary after about 2 minutes. Lacking any intelligence, we really don't care what happens to them.

The setting is significantly eerie but put to bad use by the inept videographer (not a film director at all). Quick jumps, bad lightning (intended) and idiotic editing further drag this into the mud.

The ending is entirely absurd, preposterous and ludicrous. It does not deviate from the now-standard formula of "found footage movies" that now permeate the horror market.

Awful.

The film lets us see The Pranksters, two video vloggers who have a following by doing stupid pranks like spending the night in a morgue with dead bodies. Their arch rival is Betty (Nilam Farooq) who questions their maturity. A challenge between the two factions has been devised to spend the night in a haunted hospital outside of Berlin. We discover it was used during WWII to experiment on sick people with TB. Story goes Hitler was a patient there during WWI. There is a legend about patient 106 who got pregnant by a doctor and she still roams the halls. They go to the location along with a film crew and Marne (Sonja Gerhardt) the medium. We are told it is winter and cold but we never see any frozen breathe of people with red face and sniffles from the cold. The pranksters do their pranks on Betty, but soon there are things they are not controlling.

I watched the film in German with English subtitles because reviews claimed the English version was monotone. It added some realism to the feature watching in German. Okay for a found footage which includes the jerk cam, floor cam, dark cam, bad light cam, and this one includes the famous dragged across the floor cam.

Guide: F-word. No sex. Corpse nudity.

Targeted to current youth culture with their craving for internet presence - an aspect which becomes an important angle - if u make it to the end... I have to say, the 1st half was for me no fun to watch unless u are interested in dialogues around bro talk, the excessive use of ingenious swear words and characters as unlikeable as possible. But once the story evolves (aka one after the other disappears or dies) it does pick up tension. The twist or reveal was quite a surprise and very different to similar found footage flicks! Twist number2 a nice add on just before the end credits roll.

The Germans have always known how to add a touch of grace and originality to the most clichéd themes, even in the saturated market of "found footage" films. "Heilstätten" (2018), by German director Michael David Pate, exemplifies this, emerging as one of the worst nightmares of its recent collective memory, infused with a highly concentrated gothic essence, akin to an essential oil. This is a testament to Europe's age-old culture.

This approach sweetens and enhances a film molded from the tired and overused subgenre of mockumentaries, adding a distinct, old-world European luster. This film marks Pate's earnest foray into feature filmmaking and, to further complicate matters, into the horror genre. With two comedies under his belt, and let's be honest, not particularly well-received ones, Pate dives into the quagmire of a mockumentary, interspersing it with external narrative perspectives.

It's evident that Pate was aiming for an easy win with a once-popular format, but by 2015, it was already gasping for air. And by the time he got around to it in 2018, it reeked of staleness. However, Pate's primary misstep was overestimating his and his art team's ability, including cinematographer Pascal Schmit, to create an effective set. The dilapidated asylum, both inside and out, establishes a scene that quickly immerses the audience. At least that was my experience: a space that, through its aesthetics and the imagery attributed to it in the narrative, manages to keep us glued to our seats. Every element of the set, without exception, creates not just discomfort but a true context that, with its enveloping authenticity and the onset of night, reaches a point of suffocation and claustrophobia. This recreation was so cool that the Koreans, almost simultaneously in the same year, under the direction of Jeong Beom-sik, released "Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum," practically under identical artistic, technical, and narrative premises. It's hard to say who copied whom.

Nowadays, information travels so fast through media and networks that, despite what might be documented, it's unclear whether the Korean copied the German or vice versa. This piece stands as an example of technical proficiency. "Heilstätten" also features a generic but effective score by Andrew Ryan, which at least fits well and serves its purpose during climactic moments. The special effects are decent and restrained, avoiding an overindulgence in blood and gore, thus preventing a narratively weak film from becoming an easy target for ridicule and satire.

The cast is a mix of genuine YouTubers, seasoned film actors, and even some with significant theater experience, all displaying their skills on screen.

The issue with the cast lies not so much in their talent, which shines through at times, but in what a clumsy script, co-written by Pate and Ecki Ziedrich, allows them. The film starts with two potentially strong axes: a simple yet potentially rich plot and a system of possible relationships between characters. Additionally, there's an underlying critique of current generations obsessed with broadcasting every detail of their lives on social media for a handful of "likes." Instead of capitalizing on these powerful elements and the beautifully crafted setting, the script suffers from rhythmic imbalance, lack of direction, and ultimately, underdeveloped narrative arcs, including the dimensional construction of its characters.

Pate seems to be more focused on (and I'd like to think this is intentional rather than a lack of talent) a biting critique of his contemporaries, keeping them chasing their tails with challenges, tricks, vacuous conversations, boasts, "likes," and other nonsense for over two-thirds of the film. This prevents any semblance of character depth from emerging.

With all the narcissistic posturing, dark shots, confusion in the shadows, and shaky hand-held camera work, the audience is even deprived of the pleasure of seeing the beautiful faces and bodies of these young men and women. Their true communicative facet only reveals itself when the fireworks of frenzied action in the last part begin. This does little to help us understand who is who, let alone identify with any of them. Only at the end do we connect with Marnie (Sonia Gerhardt), the sole survivor of the madness (pun intended), who will likely think twice before venturing onto a YouTube channel again.

Moreover, it's impossible to overlook how most characters in "Heilstätten" see their existence in the script reduced to mere pawns in a macabre game, like sheep on their way to shearing or, worse, to slaughter. This oversimplification not only strips them of depth and relevance but also misses the chance to delve into intriguing subplots. A glaring example is the so-called patient 106, euthanized within the sanatorium. The story of this character, whose ghost is rumored to haunt the asylum, could have added an extra layer of mystery and psychological terror to the plot. However, this subplot is only superficially explored, squandering a golden opportunity to enrich the narrative and immerse the viewer in a more complex and nuanced experience.

Pate tries to salvage a chaotic and absurd script that continually tests, and ultimately exhausts, the audience's patience, with a twist that aims to be the height of mockery, culminating in a scene that's cruel, horrific, and surprising. All this, in a futile "tour de force" in the last 25 minutes, comes too late to regain credibility with an audience that has stoically waited for something to happen or be revealed. While Pate's attempt to inject pace and momentum in the final crescendo is appreciated, as well as a "masterclass" in surgical anatomy, it backfires, including the twist upon twist in the final shot, suggesting that behind every "bad guy" there's an even "badder" one. Everything from the revelation of Tim Oliver Schulz's character (Theo) to his final, ghastly act of shooting himself on camera (a sardonic visual representation of the critique of how far one can go to create a viral product on social media, bordering on comedy) adds fuel to the fire, mocking the neuroses of today's young adults to an extreme.

The script reaches a critical point when Theo, after cutting off Betty's nose live, begins to dissect Finn (Timmi Trinks) to remove his heart. This moment of extreme horror is abruptly interrupted when Theo leaves Finn in agony to chase after Marnie, who has managed to escape. And Charly (Emilio Sakraya) is left awaiting his torture tied to the operating table (Theo had proposed hanging him by his vocal cords), in a scene that promised to be a grotesque display of violence but remains unfinished. This sudden shift, abandoning Theo's bloody work to chase Marnie, deprives the audience of a visceral terror climax. Although effective in maintaining tension, it results in a missed opportunity to explore the depths of barbarity, leaving a sense of an incomplete horror narrative.

In conclusion, the film fails to crest the wave and is instead capsized by it, ending not with our jaws dropped in awe but in laughter. Culinary speaking, Pate burns the sauce, and it might be something he sought, consciously or not.

In the end, I feel a certain degree of second-hand embarrassment for a German audience that expected a resurgence of national horror after years of self-flagellation with historical memory quotas from ultra-conservative political correctness. We witness the schizophrenic dance of a young filmmaker torn between the most caustic caricature and the exploitation of ideas and opportunities served to him on a silver platter. And, as it should be, this mad and macabre dance takes place in the context of an asylum (albeit abandoned, it's still an asylum). At least in this, there lies some coherence.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I began watching this movie. I knew it was made in Germany, fortunately dubbed in English since my eyesight is off at the moment making subtitles difficult, a sort of found footage style film and involved an overnight stay in a haunted location. As big a fan of movies like this, in particular GRAVE ENCOUNTERS, I was anxious to see how this one turned out. I wasn't disappointed.

The story involves several vloggers, those who create their own YouTube channels in hopes of drawing in the most viewers. The first among them is Marnie, a young girl whose channel deals with confronting the things that frighten you most. Her channel is one of the low rated ones. Next up is Charly and Finn, a pair of rap style wannabes who prank people on their videos with a large following. Lastly is Betty, a self-styled guru of beauty who is the most self-absorbed of the group as well.

Charly and Finn have issued a challenge to Betty to join them on their next prank. Their pranks tend to involve something illegal and this is no exception. Their friend Theo, a tourism guide, is sneaking them into the infamous Heilstatten, a hospital in Berlin long abandoned where it is said tuberculosis patients met gruesome deaths and Hitler was once a patient. The challenge is to spend the night in the building. Along with tech assistant Emma they head in.

Before the night gets rolling Marnie joins the group. It turns out Theo was her boyfriend and a year earlier had taken her and her sister into the building. Marnie saw something then, a woman in white, which frightened her and insists that they all leave. The pranksters offer her a link to their page and Betty's if she agrees to stay and be their "medium". Theo insists that if she's staying it's just to gain viewers to her blog. She agrees and they all settle in for a night in the hospital.

It isn't long before things begin happening. Doors slam and sounds come from various parts of the building. Charly and Finn make jokes and Betty tells them to behave. But Marnie knows there is something there. She asks Theo if he bothered telling them about patient 106, a woman who was impregnated by one of the doctors and later tried to kill herself. She is supposed to haunt the halls here. At first the pranksters pull jokes that frighten Betty. But when they begin seeing things for real the tables turn. Before the night is out they will become believers if they can only survive the night.

The movie uses the typical setup for movies like this but that's to be expected. If your film involves a haunted location and filming done by those looking for ghost there isn't much else you can do. The fact that these are not actual ghost hunters but kids who have YouTube channels they are trying to boost was a fresh idea and explains the use of numerous cameras on hand that they plant throughout the building. The gore effects are nicely done but being able to see them in the low lit atmosphere makes them difficult to really appreciate.

The acting here is not top notch but being a lower budget film I wouldn't expect that. Still most of the performers here do an admirable job with the possible exception of Nilam Farooq as Betty. I'm not sure if it was her performance or the dialogue provided but she came off as a completely unlikeable character who spent far too much time in hysterics. Even setting aside the fact that this was a German made film that was dubbed it became too much at times.

I will say without providing any spoilers that the twist in the film was completely unexpected and I'm one that usually sees things coming in advance. It was the saving grace of the film and made it one that I could then recommend for others to watch. Ignore the constant swearing of the young kids, no doubt to show them as being young kids, and give the story time to unfold. By then end I think you'll enjoy this one as well.

...when this absolute pile of steaming turds of a movie was over.

Un uninspired found footage taking place in a hauted derelict sanatorium where a bunch of stupid social media influencers (pleonasm?) lock themselves for a "fear challenge".

If you manage to drag yourself into the ending part, you'll have the pleasure to see a double plot twist so idiotic and cliché you'll wonder if that wasn't just a joke.

I don't know how some filmmakers can still tell themselves, nowadays, that making that kind of movies is a good idea, and some producers to give them the money to make them.

Special mention to the French dub, bad enough to make it almost funny.

So, if you value your time (unlike me), take a wide berth around this wreck and go watch something else.