THE DEVIL'S BATH - Mark Reviews Movies

The Devil's Bath, Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2024

The story of The Devil's Bath deals with a few of the paradoxes of Christianity. In the opening scene, for example, a woman takes a baby, either hers or someone else's (It's neither clear nor, apparently, important), and walks with the child through the forest. There's a rising sense of tension and discomfort, which co-writers/co-directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz communicate by way of the rhythm of the changing scenery, as this woman soon finds herself by a waterfall. Atop the cliff and standing in the last length of rushing water before it plummets, the woman stares out and casually tosses the infant over the edge.

The horror of this act is undeniable and exists in multiple ways—the attitude of the woman, the sight and sounds of the baby's last moments, the way she calmly returns to her village to flatly report that she has committed a crime. Ultimately, we learn that the woman was executed for the murder of the infant, her severed head locked in a cage while her headless body, mutilated by assorted people taking appendages as souvenirs or odd relics, is left sitting in a chair somewhere in a clearing in the woods.

Eventually, we also learn that this woman sought confession before her death. In the eyes and beliefs of the Church, she had been absolved of her sins and could be granted a heavenly reward for doing so. That didn't change anything about her earthly punishment, of course, and what does that say about humanity's sense of compassion and justice compared the Christian ideal of the eternal? In this worldview, are we so far below the divine that we're only capable of base retribution, or are we somehow above it by offering judgment that isn't coming from on high?

Fiala and Franz's movie approaches such ideas. When it comes to the central contradiction of the story, it has to do with suicide, which is perceived as a sin greater than murder, if only because a death by suicide comes without the possibility of confessing that sin. Everything revolves around religion and custom in this place—Austria—and this time—1750. People are taught such notions, especially the virtue of family, early in life and are expected to live by them to their fullest. Anyone who fails to meet those expectations, such as a married woman who does not—or cannot—have any children or an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant, is ostracized by the community.

One such woman is Agnes (Anja Plaschg), who marries Wolf (David Scheid) and is confused by his unwillingness to consummate their marriage. This, as well as the constant judgment of her overbearing mother-in-law (played by Maria Hofstätter) sends her on a spiral toward a mostly inevitable end. It's so obvious because the movie tells us as much by way of the shocking opening, as well as the way Agnes seems drawn to the executed woman.

The problem here isn't that the story's conclusion is a given, because the feeling that it's almost predetermined says something about the oppressive nature of this little piece of society. With all of these religious and cultural beliefs in place, there is no other end for a woman like Agnes, who has been told her entire life that she must act, behave, and be a certain way, only for her circumstances to prevent her existence as the kind of woman everyone expects her to be.

No, the main issue is in how much we have to presume about this society and these cultural tenets, because the filmmakers seem only comfortable hinting at them for a general mood of unease, instead of directly addressing, confronting, or even communicating them in order to make us feel the rising distress within Agnes. The characters here never come across as real people, only pawns in a twisted variation of a morality play in which a person sees the only means of salvation from earthly torment by way of inflicting harm on the innocent.

There is a potency to that conceit, to be sure, especially during the movie's climax, in which sudden, brutal violence is juxtaposed with moments of spiritual passion and communal celebration. It's such a strong, striking, and genuinely horrifying conclusion, in fact, that it puts much the preceding story into a clearer context (A mostly unnecessary text coda is so blunt that one wonders if the filmmakers worried they had missed making the point they wanted to make).

That's important, because most of the movie focuses on the oppressive atmosphere, setting aside the plot, characters, and even the ideas at the core of this story. For the most part, Agnes wanders around the woods, avoiding her sexless marriage and the imposition of her husband's mother on the couple's life together, and finds no solace in nature or other people. She becomes little more than an idea here with that repetitive approach.

It's a simple one, too, which is a shame considering the big ideas about religion and society that are right on the fringes of The Devil's Bath. They stay there, though, until the finale forces us, too late, to reckon with the bloody consequences.

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