MovieChat Forums > Hagazussa (2019) Discussion > Overrated (or misunderstood)

Overrated (or misunderstood)


The film offers an intriguing setting similar to "the witch" which I thought was excellent. The reviews from RT also were 96%, so I was excited to watch.

The biggest issue is simply a lack of dialog. There are English subtitles, but it really doesn't matter because not much is said, and what is said doesnt really help the viewer. The upshot is that we have an orphan hermit girl that local villagers think is a witch, because they thought her mother was a witch. Ok....

The girl somehow has her own child many years later after her own mother dies. It's cold as hell and she lives alone in a cabin outside of town... Ok....

Everyone is superstitious, even the local priest, who had tended to her mother years ago when she was sick. The protagonist is then summoned again as an adult to meet with the priest. But he just tells her she is evil and cleansing is required, and gives her a skull. I guess he didn't think she was much of a threat or he would have killed her. Ok.....

Local town girl befriends the protagonist, visits her, then lures her into a situation where she gets raped by a local man. Why mess with a known/alleged witch? Ok...

Protagonist has animals on her small farm, and a decent looking setup. How that happened is never explained. But someone comes by and takes or kills the animals. Ok...

Protagonist retreats to the forest, trips out on schrooms, And drowns her baby in a swamp. Unfortunate, also completely out of step with preceding events. She returns home, is horrified to find she has killed her child, but then cooks the baby in a stew and eats it. Again completely out of step with preceding events. Her hut then catches on fire.

It's completely unclear whether any of this is supernatural or just extremely unlucky. And frankly the film is gross, especially the ending. There's no need to see someone make a stew out of a dead baby. Then munch on the carcass.

I get the whole less is more, ominous imagery, let the sound tell the story. But thats not what happens here. You have some pretty significant and inexplicable behavior, and very little character development or interaction with outside forces that would justify the behaviors depicted. I guess gross now constitutes art.

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I think the idea was that it was the superstitions that gave birth to reality rather than the other way around. the locals basically created a witch out of an unfortunate woman, with her anger as the catalyst.
I agree with you that the setting was nice and exciting but in the end it lacked something. I say it got too busy with the atmosphere that it forgot to have a story. aesthetics can not make up for all other flaws. especially when you are being compared to films like The Witch which has enough of everything.

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did you think the witch was too fast paced and action packed?

then this is the movie for you.

i guess i thought it was pretty good. been a few years. i honestly can barely remember it, but i do recall that there were lots of things to admire in it.

but ultimately, it's hard for me to watch stuff like this without my brain continuously yelling silently 'get on with things already, why don't you?'

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One of the most boring films you'll ever come across.

Visually nice, but boy is it a bore.

I remember a scene where the Woman walks into water and holy shit, they literally slowed it way the fuck down, I thought it was never gonna' end. It seemed like literal minutes of slow-mo nothingness. Trying way, way too hard to be artistic and atmospheric.

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Recalling this one now, its been only a couple years and I've pretty much forgotten this one. I guess certain movies very high ratings on rottentomatoes.com (93%) because the critics either caught the move and liked it, or they have a friend/colleague that was somehow involved in the production. Its basically a waste of time for a movie critic to watch a ton of independent or foreign films just to give bad review. Now, giving a bad review to a movie like WaterWorld is much more exciting than trashing Hagazussa.

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It's only got 29 reviews.

It's one of those foreign films that does the indie festival circuit. The critics who frequent them are the sorts to lap this stuff up and no one else bothers to watch it, hence the stupidly high score.

It's seriously one of the most boring films I've ever seen. Long shots of pretty scenery, very little dialogue, vague meandering plot, some scenes are literally in slow-motion...

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