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Irene (Franziska Weiss), who has just started a new job at a hotel, at
first finds it pretty exciting ... but soon the dullness takes over. Plus,
she doesn't really get along with her colleagues, someone plays mean
tricks on her like stealing her necklace or breaking her glasses, and a
romance with a boy from the village (Christopher Schärf) brings little
release or satisfaction, only trouble when she has him sleep over at her
little room in the hotel (which is a strict no-no, especially if you're
caught).
Only the story of her predecessor in the job, Eva, who has one day just
disappeared (and is eventually found murdered) keeps her somehow
intrigued.
Eventually, on her inspection round, Irene locks herself out of the
hotel, goes off into the dark, a scream ... the end.
On one hand, this film is full of atmosphere, full of subtle suspense,
and full of weirdness.
On the other hand though, the film lacks a coherent story, the
weirdness as such in the end amounts to nothing, more often than not the
suspense scenes seem to be little more than independent set-pieces that
lead nowhere but only show that director Hausner has mastered suspense
filmmaking in theory (actually the film looks more like an exercise in
suspense than a suspense film), and the ending seems to have been thrown
in just to bring the film without narrative necessity. As a whole, the
film seems reminiscent of David Lynch, of Stanley Kubrick's Shining,
the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink and pretty much every other film
about a weird hotel you can think of.
It's not that the film is bad as such, it has its fascinating moments
... with a good script that connects the suspense set-pieces with one
another it just could have been so much more ...
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