Mark Reviews Movies: FOUR HANDS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 13, 2018

Writer/director Oliver Kienle's Four Hands is a different sort of revenge thriller. The rather wacky and patently ridiculous premise sets up a scenario in which one woman is both working to avenge the brutal murders of her parents 20 years earlier and trying to stop that revenge from happening.

This might sound confounding, but it's relatively simple: Sophie (Frida-Lovisa Hamann) has either been possessed by her elder sister Jessica (Friederike Becht) or had a psychotic split and, as a result, adopted her sister's personality. Kienle smartly doesn't try to explain what has happened, after both Sophie and Jessica are hit by a car at the same time, killing Jessica and leaving Sophie traumatized and/or haunted. It's the right choice, if only because it means that we're left only to accept the gimmick—not try to figure out the psychological or metaphysical rationale behind it.

We are, essentially, encouraged to go along for the ride. It's a clever one, too, as Sophie repeatedly wakes up to discover that Jessica's spirit or personality has been hard at work—tracking down their parents' killers, who have been released from prison, and preparing the tools necessary to enact bloody vengeance. We follow both sisters (By this point, you know what I mean), as each one works toward her goal. Jessica starts Sophie on a path toward trouble, and Sophie has to retrace her own/Jessica's steps, try to repair the damage done to a potential romantic partner (played by Christoph Letkowski), and, at one point, figure out what to do with a woman who has been locked in the trunk of her car.

It's ludicrous, of course, but Kienle keeps moving the story and the conflict forward with enough momentum that we're only half-conscious of how preposterous this material is. There are some amusing tricks, such as when Sophie becomes Jessica in the middle of a date, and some impressive scenarios, such as the opening murders (shot low and obscured from the girls' perspective) and a one-take chase with one of the killers (who happens to be naked).

Ultimately, though, the movie doesn't fulfill the promise of its setup, leading up to a straightforward confrontation and a last-minute twist, which supposedly changes everything but only provides a cosmetic shift (and a lot more confusion). Four Hands is effective enough that we expect a cleverer, more satisfactory resolution.

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