Berlin Syndrome suffers from an ailment common among independent genre films: it tries too hard. This is more likely due to the need to satisfy backers rather than any artistic choice by director Cate Shortland. The film plays nicely as an amalgam of the standard woman-abroad and captivity horror sub-genres, but it too often wallows in broader narratives exploring character and setting that might have worked for a different film.
Clare (Teresa Palmer) is a wayward Aussie backpacking through the former German Democratic Republic, nominally taking photographs for an art book she is planning. She meets English teacher Andi (Max Riemelt), who was born in the GDR. He drives her around, they fall for one another and Clare soon finds herself spending the night at his apartment. Andi lives in an abandoned apartment complex in the recesses of what was once East Berlin, and “accidentally” locks Clare in when he goes to work.
She soon discovers that she is a prisoner, and that Andi has done this before. What ensues is for the most part a tense, dread-inducing captivity drama complete with near-misses, bloodshed, unfortunate Samaritans and an ultimate showdown. But the film is undone by its ambitions.
The plot requires the audience to suspend some disbelief: there seems to be no police presence in all of Berlin, and Andi’s apartment bloc is utterly desolate but still close enough the city for him to work, visit family and receive power and water. Such are the conventions of captivity horror, and a successful example would be absorbing enough that viewers happily go along for the ride.
The issue arises when Berlin Syndrome tries to transcend its genre confines and strives for realism, addressing the trauma of the demise of the GDR, a society that collapsed upon itself and then merged with a fundamentally different society. Andi is damaged; his troubled youth has led him to entrap and punish women. The forays into developing his character, the heavy metaphors of him teaching James Baldwin’s writings on exile and return to his students and the insistence on Clare’s photo book are all part of the film’s ambition.
This is a problem for multiple reasons. Most fundamentally, it violates the assumptions it forces on to the viewer; the Berlin of the film is too Janus-faced to make sense. It also detracts from the tension and action of the plot’s main arc by distracting the audience with other stuff. A film about the GDR’s demise and the unmaking of places—spaces with specific cultural meanings—back into mere spaces devoid of meaning would be a great film, but the energy in Berlin Syndrome is all about Clare’s efforts to escape Andi’s apartments.
In the final accounting, this is a good film that tries so hard it becomes barely mediocre. It is too long, too slow and eventually silly when viewed through its own logic, in spite of the trappings of a rather entertaining horror thriller.
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