The real 'suicide by proxy' phenomenon inspires this slow-burn, lived-in period horror. Our The Devil’s Bath review:
at the small village of Krumhard where she came across seven-year-old Hans Michael Furch playing with a group of boys along the roadside. She convinced Hans to guide her to a nearby town with the promise of a reward, and the pair soon embarked on a journey through dense, mostly secluded forest. When evening came, young Hans asked to return to his home, but before he could do so, Agnes pulled out a knife and murdered the child.
The film introduces the protagonist on the cusp of her new life: the morning of her wedding. The lighting is soft and golden as she sits in lush woodland, softly singing a hymn to the Blessed Mary while collecting foliage to make a bridal crown. Her mother rushes her inside and she bids farewell to her childhood home by measuring and marking her height on a wooden door frame one last time. And just like that, they’re off—marching through the Austrian wilderness with her dowry on a wagon.
Shot on gorgeous 35mm by cinematographer Martin Gschlact, the film studies mundane moments, meditating on farmhands clearing rocks from fields and women washing their linens in a shallow creek. For many sequences, the directing duo’s camera sits motionless while watching the quietness of the Austrian countryside in the mid-1700s. There’s a sense of realism in the way Plaschg interacts with her surroundings.
That slowness is very intentional, though, and the filmmakers’ decision not to follow a conventional horror structure feels empathetic to the women whose stories they’ve been inspired by. Agnes is not a monster archetype. She’s not a saint. She’s an ordinary person molded after women who didn’t want to exist in the world anymore, but due to religious conditioning, were made to believe that it was better to kill an innocent child and seek atonement before their execution than to commit suicide.
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