{"id":934,"date":"2025-04-04T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/?p=934"},"modified":"2025-01-10T16:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T16:36:10","slug":"western-european-horror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/2025\/04\/04\/western-european-horror\/","title":{"rendered":"Western European Horror"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WARNING:<\/mark> <\/strong>This Article May Contain Spoilers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As many of you may be aware, I have already covered a few countries of Central and Western Europe individually \u2013 Austria, France and the Netherlands to name a few. Unfortunately, it is a lot harder to find enough films for each of the remaining countries so I felt it would be better to put them all together. Especially it become confusing figuring out which countries are in which area as places like Hungary overlap the two. Some of you will find all this a little bit of a cheat in places just don\u2019t look too much into it OK? This wasn\u2019t easy\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eye in the Labyrinth<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                OK, so for those of you who may look this up, I know the countries of origin are both Italy and Monaco! I did say this article wasn\u2019t easy didn\u2019t I? I love the fact that the film doesn\u2019t actually wait around to get into the violence! You definitely feel the Italian influence on this film as it very easily could have been made by Dario Argento. I understand why it is described as mystery\/horror but I feel like they only use the word \u2018horror\u2019 because of the blood. The way it opened, I expected something with a little more of a psychological feeling. With what came across as such an intense opening, I really hoped for much more than what was given. I\u2019m also a little confused by the ending. Is Frank trying to make Julie believe she killed Luca, or did she genuinely kill him? Judging by Frank\u2019s demise \u2013 I\u2019d say she killed Luca!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Of all the films in this article, this one definitely has the best opening scene! I was expecting some sort of slasher film, seeing as they are trapped in the middle of nowhere with no mobile phones and the fact that the group we follow for the majority of the film almost seem to fit that typical slasher film trope that I\u2019ve explained before. I guess this means that the rules of a slasher film transcend all languages. Even down to the gratuitous tit shot. I\u2019m not sure if this is supposed to be a comedy horror but it definitely had its funny moments, for me anyway, like when Julek explains the plot of An American Werewolf in London <\/em>or when the mother of our antagonist falls into the basement. On second thought, I don\u2019t think that last one was supposed to be funny! I started to think following the first death that they were all going to be homages to known horror films but it seems only Daniel\u2019s and the priest\u2019s reminded me of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11:23-09:59: Projekt Angst<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                So, originally I was going to use a film called Frost <\/em>to represent Swiss horror but I\u2019m glad I changed it for 2 reasons. One, it felt more like a mystery than a horror film and two, this is of the found footage subgenre and you can never go wrong with those. It\u2019s also a great start when you\u2019re told from the outside that your lead characters won\u2019t survive. It\u2019s rare that I\u2019m unnerved by the simplest of things but there was something creepy about the fact that their guide, who seems unable to speak AT ALL let alone Swiss German, locks them in the bunker overnight. Which is made worse when Manu doesn\u2019t seem to know who they\u2019re talking about! Everything starts off really jovial and genuinely nothing seems to happen for a long time \u2013 so it\u2019s like a paranormal event or anything, which just makes the final 10 minutes super strange! There\u2019s no explanation to the characters\u2019 deaths except for Esther\u2019s, the rest of them just climb further into the mountain via the death chamber and that is all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Basement<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                I\u2019m going to throw it out there straight away, the opening to this film gave me Doctor Who <\/em>vibes and I didn\u2019t like it! Making the mannequins move when no one\u2019s looking, very stone angels and they have always creeped me out! We all know, I can\u2019t resist a found-footage film and this definitely starts off feeling like one. If I\u2019ve said it once, I\u2019ll say it again \u2013 don\u2019t mess with the afterlife! This film is proof of that. I\u2019ll be honest, the acting isn\u2019t great but all in all it is actually a pretty decent film. It seems that they conjure whatever is living in the basement by messing up a s\u00e9ance. However, I have a feeling from the beginning that this evil is always awake. What\u2019s really disturbing for me is how realistic the deaths look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yummy<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                There\u2019s always two main stays in these articles \u2013 found footage or zombie horror. This is the latter. It actually reminds me a little bit of Rabid <\/em>\u2013 zombie film set in a cosmetic surgery hospital. I\u2019m not going to lie, I was suspicious of the lead surgeon from the very beginning! However it was obvious that this film doesn\u2019t take itself seriously at all. It\u2019s more in the realms of Shaun of the Dead <\/em>than Night of the Living Dead <\/em>on the zombie film scale (if one existed that is). A guy explodes from being filled up with too much of his own fat for God\u2019s sake \u2013 if that\u2019s not comedy horror then I don\u2019t know what is. That is only the start of the comedy that ensues. Weirdly, I like the fact that it seemed as if Michael had been killed off early \u2013 you know, moving away from the unlikely hero clich\u00e9 but that turned out not to be the case. That being said, this definitely ends the way I love a horror film to end\u2026and that is with everybody dead! And my, my, do they do it in a spectacular fashion!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noonday Witch<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                I started to wonder two things at the beginning of the film. 1) whether mum or daughter were going to end up being the titular witch and 2) why Eliska was lying to her daughter, Anetka, about the fact that her father was clearly dead. It seems I was wrong when it comes to the first part, as the Noonday Witch seems to be more like some sort of bogeyman that takes children away. For a long time, I thought that she was going to end up being just an underlying part of the story and the death of Anetka\u2019s father was going to be at the forefront. But then came the creepy image of a woman with long fingers while Eliska was in the bathroom\u2026and I mean creepy! <\/strong>However this doesn\u2019t happen until 25 minutes from the end of the film. Because everything happened so late in the film I genuinely didn\u2019t expect it to have a happy ending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers As many of you may be aware, I have already covered a few countries of Central and Western Europe individually \u2013 Austria, France and the Netherlands to name a few. Unfortunately, it is a lot harder to find enough films for each of the remaining countries so I felt … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-the-worlds-a-stage","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":935,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}