The Devil’s Bath: two expertly-crafted hours of dread, gore, and emotional violence

Movies don’t come any more unremittingly bleak thanThe Devil’s Bath, which finds the filmmaking team of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala shifting from horror to historiography. It’s a move that suits them. Set in the directors’ native Austria circa 1751 – specifically the mountainous Styria region that ultimately produced Arnold Schwarzenegger – and scrupulously researched according to documents from the period, the film focuses on Agnes (Anja Plaschg), a happy and healthy newlywed whose entwined desires to please her husband Wolf (David Scheid) and become a mother are seemingly within her grasp. 

Agnes is willing to accept certain compromises in their living arrangement – like a move into a hastily purchased farmhouse – but she’s confused when Wolf refuses to consummate the marriage. He’s harboring a dangerous secret, and the consequences are felt more acutely by his wife; in not becoming pregnant, Agnes risks pariah status at a time when scapegoats are eagerly led to the slaughter. Everywhere she goes, she encounters grisly physical evidence  of how her piously bloothirsty community punishes perceived female transgression.

Where Franz and Fiala’s earlier genre efforts like Goodnight, Mommy (2022) and The Lodge (2019) trafficked (often expertly) in suspense, The Devil’s Bath is an exercise in inexorability: we know where the story is going long before Agnes does, and spend most of the two hour running time in a state of grueling, expectant dread. What keeps the anxiety from metastasising into boredom is the sheer, terrible beauty of the production, which strips away any sense of fairytale preciousness from the period setting while still retaining a dark enchantment around the edges. 

Crucially, the filmmakers don’t condescend to their characters’ deep-seated religious beliefs; if anything, Agnes’ suffering at the hands of others is made all the more compelling by her own internalised sense of shame, which renders faith as a form of self-harm. Plaschg, who is also a musician, is an amazingly transparent actress; she makes Agnes incapable of hiding anything. There are two late sequences – one involving a meeting with a small child; another set during a form of confession – that border on unwatchable because of the level of emotional violence; elsewhere, Franz and Fiala pile on the gore, albeit in ways that wind up being anything but crowd-pleasing. That The Devil’s Bath is a tough movie to watch is a testimony to its makers’ talents, as well as their real and ruthless sense of principle. 

 ► The Devil’s Bath is available to stream on Shudder now.