| The Calendar Killer tells a story about a woman being hunted by a serial killer intertwined with themes including paranoia, domestic violence, mental health and suicide. It ultimately has an important message which comes after a very unsettling and unnerving hour and a half of nobody ever feeling safe, and constantly questioning who to trust, if you can trust anybody. | | 2024
Directed by: Adolfo J. Kolmerer
Screenplay by: Sebastien Fitzek, Susanne Schneider
Starring: Luise Heyer, Sabin Tambrea
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Klara (Luise Heyer) is on her way home when she calls a helpline for scared and abused women. When Jules answers, she says she didn’t call, but since there was no other way for her call to get through to Jules, Klara agrees that she must have. She has just run away from a party where she was drugged unconscious and beaten and would have been raped or killed had she not gotten away. Her vision is blurred, she barely has the stamina to get home, but her story to Jules doesn’t start with the party, it starts with the calendar killer.
There is a serial killer terrorizing the city, telling people when they’re going to die. And he has left a message for Klara, either her husband dies or she dies, today. Klara’s plan when she gets home is to kill herself. And this is where the film really starts playing with characterization. Which characters are trustworthy and which characters are not as they seem is a continuing juxtaposition where every single character will be tested multiple times by the audience. This is not overly deceptive (there was only one character that I was completely off about), but it does keep you unsettled.
I love the setting. It’s winter in a German city and the rural areas immediately outside of the city. There’s a sprinkling of snow on the ground. Just enough to leave partial footprints but the more tree coverage, less snow, and no footprints. Just another aspect to leave you unsettled. Meanwhile the streets in the city are lined with lit up trees, just a gorgeous golden glow twinkling around while people, including Klara, are dressed to the nines to attend holiday parties. This is a beautifully shot film, and winter is used to great effect as both a sense of holiday warmth and kindness, but also a cold and unforgiving landscape.
The Calendar Killer is firmly a thriller. Not so much a horror as it is primarily a quiet, character-driven film with relatively little violence and a final theme that makes this all too real. I’m a fan of movies that are ultimately about a lot more than what they seem to be about on the surface, and that’s what won me over here. It’s a very unsettling watch, difficult at times to get into, but the intrigue into each character with the unrelenting questions of trust and paranoia are enough to drive the film towards its satisfying ending.
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