Nights of Horror: Luz (2018)

Luz (Germany, 2018)

I gotta give all the props to Shudder on this one, because I was scrolling and happened to land on this one. 70 minutes long, in German and Spanish, I was like “Yeah, I’ve got time.” It was at this point that I said “Tilman Singer, why do I know that- CUCKOO!”

This film was Tilman Singer’s thesis project at film school, and it was absolutely good enough to put his name in the mouths of everyone who knows what the future looks like. The cinematographer, Paul Faltz, also shot Cuckoo, so the compare/contrast muscles were flexing something fierce, especially in the wide shots of mundane activity in office-type settings with clean and crisp lines, looking like an ikea ad framing one or two things that feel just a tiny bit off.

There is a marvelous scene in the beginning featuring Dr. Rossini, (Jan Bluthardt, also in Cuckoo), a psychotherapist on call, drinking in a bar and getting propositioned by a woman, Nora (Julia Riedler), who keeps ordering him round after round so he will listen to her story. She has a friend, Luz, who needs medical attention, who may or may not be able to alter reality. You see, Luz induced mass hysteria at their school when they were kids and may or may not have actually summoned a demon, kicking off a series of events that shut down the school and scattered their friend group to the winds. Anyway, by chance she just ran into Luz again, right before Luz jumped out of a moving cab.

Nora is absolutely captivating, by the way. She’s gorgeous and her eyes are intense, and the more drunk our doctor gets, the more his pager goes off, we know he’s on call and we do not want Nora to stop talking. She sucks us in and delivers on this story as the tension ratchets up, breaking away from her is like pulling teeth.

And for good reason, too. The reason Luz jumped out of that moving cab was because Nora has brought the demon with her all the way from South America. It’s been with her and in her the whole time. And now it’s in Rossini, suddenly stone sober and ready to go ask this beat up young woman why she jumped out of a moving cab.

It’s impossible to ignore the act, having just watched Cuckoo, of an inhuman thing putting something inside a human, which induces an immediate personality change. I love Nora transferring the demon into Dr. Rossini via a glowing light passed by kissing, just like I love the horrifying bird-women pulling a drippy handful of slut goop and sliding it up a stunned woman’s thighs. It’s filthy.

By the time we reunite Luz with the demon who loves her, this movie has gone full dream logic. It vacillates between dramatic reenactment, to intense storytelling, to implanted visions, to actual augmented reality as she tells the story to “Not-Dr.-Rossini,” the well-meaning detective Bertillon and her sound engineer assistant, who is recording everything, witnessing it all in horror, from his little booth.

For 70 minutes of mood over plot, this movie packs a fucking punch. If you’re a fan of David Lynch and Panos Cosmatos, you’ll love this.

Available on Shudder.