Cold Hell is a 2018 thriller about a woman who is witness to a murder in the neighbor apartment, but is also seen by the murderer, turning her life upside down.
Wrong place at the wrong time might be an understatement when it comes to what goes on in Stefan Ruzowitzky‘s latest chiller Cold Hell (German: Die Hölle), a tense, gritty actioner with plenty of physical and emotional punch. A jolting boost of female empowerment, it’s also a slick, fast-paced fight for survival that may revisit a few clichés we’ve seen before, but does so with unrelenting energy and a vicious, satisfying style.
Özge Dogruol (Violetta Schurawlow) lives in Vienna, she a Turkish immigrant making a living as a taxi driver, an operation run by her cousin Ranya’s (Verena Altenberger) husband. It’s not easy work and finds herself a target of the usual harrassements women all too often endure. Fortunately for her (and not so much for those she crosses), she is a master at Muay Thai, a type of combat sport employing punches, kicks and clinches. One day, she arrives home to a foul smell and looking out her window to see why, sees in the apartment just across the ally, a dead and bound nude young woman tortured to death. The problem is, in the shadows, her killer is watching and sees Özge just as she notices him.
The serial killer is targeting Muslim prostitutes, and the religion itself plays a very important role in the story. Özge is Muslim though not devout, and faces aggressive sexism from her family and is harassed ceasely at the gym where she trains. However, her hardened attitude, physical strength and fighting skills leave her hardly a victim in the traditional sense, all of which come in very handy as she commits to a new darkness that comes to consume her. The killer hunts her mercilessly, getting into her apartment and even as a passenger in her taxi. She contacts police, led by Det. Christian Steiner (Tobias Moretti), who is, like many she encounters, dismissive at first, though soon realizes that she is in very real danger.
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Making it all work is Schurawlow, an actor with few films to her name but who strikes with terrific impact. While she’s not laden with a lot of dialogue, her presence is weighty, making Özge a very convincing character. She is always believable, burdened by her place in the city and life she is part of, somehow using the threat of death from the killer as a way to channel her demons into a one-woman force of nature. Steiner, too, is very good and their curious relationship is the best reason to watch, even if we must resign ourselves to some obvious contrivances. Either way, in their hands, and with Ruzowitzky – whose 2007 The Counterfeiters won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film – offering his hyper-realistic style, this is an intelligent crime drama that puts its efforts into the people and their personal challenges rather than the action they become part of. It makes a big difference.
That means that a lot of Cold Hell uses stillness and quiet moments to build layers of tension, Ruzowitzky refusing to follow the trappings of most Hollywood movies in this genre to steer the ship. While there are great moments of frenetic momentum, including a spectacular bit inside her taxi, much of the film races forward on its suspense, a roiling mix of early William Friedkin with a dash of Hitchcock, letting this be one the best films in the genre to come along in years.
Cold Hell is a Shudder Exclusive and available to watch here.