Biest
Director: Stefan Müller
Writer: Stefan Müller
Cast: Paul Hassler, Stephanie Lexer, Peter Simonischek

Plot:
Andi (Paul Hassler) and his girlfriend Lena (Stephanie Lexer) are on a weekend getaway in a small, rather lonely house in the mountains. What could and should be romantic, is a tense affair. Not all is okay between them and it doesn’t get better when the local hunter (Peter Simonischek) knocks at their door to ask them about his disappeared wife. And then Lena disappears, too.

Austrian horror films are a rare thing – I think Biest is only the second Austrian monster movie. So I’m more than happy to report that it is even pretty damn good.

Biest adheres to pretty much all genre conventions and executes them pretty flawlessly, with creative creature design – at least as far as the obviously tight budget allowed – and a good heart.

It is generally a well-structured film. Müller is obviously of the Czechov’s gun school of filmmaking and everything that’s referenced in the beginning gets picked up again in the end. Sometimes those things are a tad too obvious and some things are therefore rather easy to foresee. But that never took away from my enjoyment.

The cast is good – especially for an Austrian film where I tend to be hypercritical and the actors tend to be not very good. Paul Hassler and Stephanie Lexer give their respective characters much depth and make their relationship very believable.

The film isn’t perfect – the tight budget makes itself known, especially in the blood effects, and not in a good way and it could have done with a little more spontaneity and less structure since it did make me feel a bit like that structural effort was a crutch for an insecure director. That is of course nothing bad in itself but I would have expected it more in a first feature film rather than a third. But it’s a really good little film and I enjoyed myself a lot.

Summarizing: Watch it! And not only to support Austrian filmmakers.