User Reviews

"Teufelsmoor" is a German television film that aired for the first time in early 2018, which means it is over two years old now. The woman in charge here as award-winning director Brigitte Bertele and the script is by Corinna Vogelsang. For her, it was the very first (and so far only) filmmaking credit. And judging from the quality here I gotta say I hope it stays that way unless she really steps up her game on the next occasions(s). With the director and writer being female, I guess it is also not a huge surprise that the central character is a woman here and same applies to the biggest supporting player. These two are played by Silke Bodenbender and Bibiana Beglau and while 2 or 3 male actors, who play smaller characters, are also not entirely unknown, the two actresses are by far the most prominent the cast has to offer. But that does not mean they are good. I have seen stuff by Beglau, also stuff that was well-received, and was not too impressed, so I am not surprised I did not like her portrayal a lot here. What really surprised me though as Bodenbender's performance. In a negative sense. I somehow remembered her more fondly and I was kinda shocked how disappointing she was here. Bodenbender and Beglau both struggled. The material is one reason, but they also managed the almost impossible to make it seem even worse. This applies mostly to line delivery, but also to physical acting and with that I am talking about a lot of things. One example would be how they move their heads or also their eyes. Just really disappointing.

Now for the story: This is where the title of my review applies. What you see in here is enough for a 4h30 miniseries. There was hardly a minute without any attempt by the writer to come up with something tense, thrilling and dramatic. Unfortunately it stayed the attempt and yet the movie takes itself so seriously from beginning to end. I could probably mention a dozen moments and sequences, actually more, that fit the description, but I will not do so and only mention a handful: the nightmare at the beginning, the fact that the father is dead, the moment when the boy scares her with the mask, the sequence at this weird celebration when the boy goes missing for a moment, the boy's health struggles in the absence of his mother, the background with the disappeared boy from years ago, the fact that her man is too busy with ork to come to her father's funeral and basically everything in the last hour (not only the injection, by the way Bodenbender's character's face expression was so cringeworthy there). I thought this was weak early on already, but when they built up Beglau's character to be a secret main antagonist, things go really wrong and the tiny little string this film may have had to reality is completely torn, destroyed by a chain saw fueled by the complete absence of talent. Okay, let's not get any more poetic here this time. I guess you get the message. Of course, Beglau is too good of an actress to be simply reduced to a character who is nothing but an observer. Yeah, right. Who are you kidding? By the way, speaking of bad acting, the child actor (the son) was also pretty bad with his line delivery and you could easily see that he was just reciting (poor) lines written for him. One example would be when he says something along the lines that he is going to protect his mother. The easily influenced will see an act of courage there (or words of courage), but people with just one ounce of taste in their bodies will easily see through this charade. This movie is a mess. It is difficult to find something of quality here. The soundtrack was alright I guess, that one actually understood that sometimes less is more. The final scene with the two children (one of them being Bodenbender's character's younger self) was alright, but only until the first grown-up showed up and honestly I am not one bit surprised that they also messed up this huge revelation that really everybody has been waiting for. Then again, by then the film had become so bad already that most people (including myself) probably stopped caring what happened back then. The entire thing is a major disappointment. It also takes something really special in terms of lack of talent to come up with a film that takes place mostly in the swamps/moor, which is really a location that could have made for a really tense atmosphere, but while they were trying so hard (not only with the title), it never feels interesting or mysterious at all. That's all. Highly not recommended.