Sitting in a pocket between historical period drama and psychological folk horror rests The Devil’s Bath, a film by adult horror auteurs Veronka Franz and Severin Fiala.

Honestly, I was sold on this one the moment I saw Franz and Fiana were the creative minds behind the project. The duo’s first film, Goodnight Mommy is considered by many, including myself, to be a modern horror masterpiece. And though more divisive, I was on board after watching their even darker sophomore effort, The Lodge. 

Sure, setting the film in the 1750’s may help set The Devil’s Bath apart from Franz and Fiala’s other efforts, but make no mistake, this type of story is completely in their wheelhouse.

An isolated female and loaming fears of a psychotic meltdown…check. 

The potential of children being in danger…check.

Deliberately slow, patient storytelling that leaves you guessing about the direction the film is heading…check. 

This one checks a lot of those boxes while stilling feeling fresh. 

The main story starts with Agnes (Anja Plaschg), a young peasant girl on the verge of getting married to a hard working villager named Wolf (Davis Scheid). 

Actually, there is opening sequence before this that I’m choosing to skip over. Why should I spoil the fun? Like The Lodge, Franz and Fiala keep people invested in their slow-burn pacing by giving us a taste of their willingness to get nasty up front. 

Now back to Agnes. As her wedding begins, she is seen gleefully revelling in the festivities, but as the day wears on signs of trouble begin to appear. First, Wolf shows Agnes their new home, which is a little too far away from her family and way too close to Wolf’s family for her liking. Then, Wolf seemingly flirts with one of the male wedding guests who is also a close friend.

Still, in her own ways, Agnes does really seem to want to be a good wife for Wolf, even if she knows that those kids everybody says she should be having are going to take a while. Wolf doesn’t exactly live up to his name in their bedroom. But her more pressing issue seems to be that her hovering, judgmental mother-in-law (Maria Hofstätter) increasingly makes her feel inadequate in her role as wife and Wolf is unflinching obedient to everything his mother has to say.

Not that Agnes is completely blameless. Anja Plaschg (who also composed the film’s soundtrack) portrays Agnes with a childlike simplicity that often clashes with the adult responsibilities of her new life. But then again, when we first meet her she is still able to chart physical growth…so she still is very much a child herself. The expectation that she would fill her new role as wife without some difficulties along the way is unrealistic.

The Devil’s Bath does an excellent job recreating the beliefs and customs of rural Austria in the 18 century. Who needs to add pagan rituals to their folk horror when the Christian rule is horrific enough? This is an era where the Church helps to enforce the law and the bodies of murderers and suicides were put on public display after being refused a proper Christian burial. Instead, money get spent creating really cool posters that illustrate the crimes of the unburied, often decapitated, corpses hoping this might act as a deteriant.

Yet despite the Church’s overwhelming authority, this is also a society where superstitions continue to persist. Dead insects, and human remains- if you can find them- get placed under a mattress to promote futility. Blood gets consumed at public executions. And in the absence of a doctor, people go to the barber when sick. Apparently, the cure for depression is to thread horse hair through the back of your neck and to tug on it frequently to let the poison out. Who knew? 

And the Agnes’ wedding looks like it was spliced together from Midsommar outtakes, including the game of hit the chicken with the stick.

But Franz and Fiala don’t just show us the barbarism of the customs of the time- they also show us the grueling day-to-day grind and how it takes its toll on young Agnes. We watch as Agnes nets fishes, hands out bread, milks goats, cleans laundry and cooks meals under the supervision of a mother-in-law that scrutinizes her every move. It’s enough to drive a girl crazy. 

Which of course is the whole point of The Devil’s Bath. Franz and Fiana’s script is based off research published by historian Kathy Stuart in her book, Suicide by Proxy in Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation. I won’t go into Stuat’s findings because I don’t want to spoil everything, but I will sat that the character of Agnes is actually based largely on the case study of girl named Eva Lizlfellnerin.

This grounded-in-real-history approach is what separates Franz and Fiana’s The Devil’s Bath from other period horrors like Robert Eggers’ The Witch or Goran Stoleviski’s You Won’t Be Alone. In a Franz and Fiana film, that things could take a supernatural turn is only ever implied. But when the dust finally settles the most horrible thing about of the events that transpired is that there is always very human explanations for them.

But if you want me to provided more evidence that Franz and Fiala are indeed masters of their craft, then I’ll ask you to consider how the foreboding opening sequence contrasts so well with the disarming nature of that scene’s later counterpart. It is absolutely brilliant how the filmmakers are able to foreshadow so much and still catch the audience off guard.

The Devil’s Bath tells a story that uniquely blends folk horror with actual historical crimes. Perhaps more importantly, it gives a voice to the many women of that period who found themselves in a hopeless situation and just wanted a way out. 

Nobody examines the past without critiquing the present and stories of female repression and depression have been told by Franz and Fiala before- and it is a story that they are very likely going tell again. They’re really good at it.