spencergrande6
The body of a famous and beautiful movie star is brought to a local morgue where some young guys have their fun with it. How could they not? She's once in a lifetime. They get coked and liquored up and have a good time with her. Then the corpse wakes up. Is she a zombie? A metaphor for their guilt? Actually alive? A surreal combination of all those? It would have been cooler if it was.Nope, she's alive and there's no pretension whatsoever about it. Any theme is lost in this straight laser-focused twist on the kidnapped young woman thriller genre. It's a good twist for the genre, but other than that offers nothing new or of any substance to it.Oh, and you never find out why anyone thought she was dead in the first place - it's completely inexplicable.
James Lister
This film has a shock factor due to the subject matter. The characters aren't bad, but with the one setting and only few characters they do feel a little one dimensional at times. Alba Ribas (Anna Fritz) steals the show for me. But the other actors do a good enough job too. The story is non-existent. Although I get what Isaac P. Creus is trying to convey. But it doesn't quite work for my taste. However, the payoff is pretty satisfying after what they did to her. I however cannot recommend this film as I think it doesn't really offer anything, but a shock value which is over after a couple of minutes.
Aske Lund
One of the things I really love about this film is how precisely its told. At no point did I feel that the film was dragging on, nor that it was showing me something that was unnecessary to the plot. I also loved how quickly it dealt with its exposition in the beginning of the film. A lot of directors would have spent 15 minutes or more following Anna Fritz on the red carpet, showing her fans cheering at her, and then cut to her being found dead. This film deals with all exposition within the first two minutes, leaving the viewer to only have to focus on the films tension. The Corpse of Anna Fritz really shows how you get a lot out of a small budget, and is a great example of "less is more".This film is incredibly tense, and had me on the edge of my seat throughout most of the film. This is due to a very good score, great pacing, as well as all actors performing really well, especially Alba Ribas.The visual style is really good. I really like way its lit, and the hand-held camera increased the tension, drawing me into the film.One of the most tense indie-thrillers I've seen in a long time.
Coventry
I have to admit that I was quite hesitant to see this film at the Brussels International Film Festival
After all, the title doesn't sound very cheerful and the two-line plot summary reveals absolutely nothing about the movie except for the perverted premise. The only I got beforehand was: "Imagine your best friend calls to say that he's in the same room as a famous actress and she isn't saying no to some action between the sheets
The only problem: your friend works at the morgue and the actress has recently deceased!" Okay, intriguing idea, I'll be the first to admit that. But where will it go from there? I hope it won't be a 76 minutes long-feature movie showing three guys committing necrophilia! Or will they get caught and does the whole thing turn into a courtroom drama? Or even worse, will the actress emerge from her deathbed as a zombie and shall she alternately rape and butcher her three assailants? I decided to purchase the ticket for "The Corpse of Anna Fritz" after all, and certainly didn't regret it. I won't reveal what does eventually happen (although many other people blatantly revealed it in their reviews) but writer Isaac P Creus and director Hèctor Hernández Vicens made the absolute most out of it and I'll gladly proclaim that "The Corpse of Anna Fritz" is a very suspenseful and absorbing thriller with a few unpredictable twists and a handful of notably frightening moments. The one thing you shouldn't expect, though, is gratuitous or repulsive footage. The necrophilia theme is quite controversial, of course, but the nudity and sexist sequences are kept to a minimum. The film does go quite far in showing how far people are prepared to do in order to protect their own sorry ass, like betrayal and even murder, which results in a number of brutal but nevertheless confronting and realistic sequences. Since there are only a couple of set pieces and a very limited cast of characters, "The Corpse of Anna Fritz" very much depends on the strong acting performances and the surefooted direction of Hèctor Hernández Vicens. It's a very simple yet effective shocker that occasionally makes you wonder how you would react in such a situation. Hopefully different than these guys!