There have been numerous stellar debut features in the realm of horror over the last several years, including Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, Robert Eggers’s The Witch, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and Ari Aster’s Hereditary, just to name a handful. Now we can add Tilman Singer’s Luz to this impressive list. And much like these aforementioned films, particularly Get Out and Hereditary, Singer’s work both pays tribute to and subverts horror films and tropes from the 1970s and 1980s, creating a cinematic experience simultaneously nostalgic and original. Also, like these debut films, Luz relies less on gore and more on atmospheric dread and tension, making its scares mostly psychological rather than visceral. For fans of this variety of horror, Luz will be a welcome addition to the family.
The film’s overall plot, on paper, sounds pretty cut-and-dry. It follows the titular character (Luana Velis) a South American transplant driving a cab in Germany, who reconnects with an old classmate from Catholic school, and in doing so, unleashes an evil from their past that they might not be able to contain. Singer tells his story in a semi-non-linear fashion, so much of this initial information comes from the classmate, Nora (Julia Riedler) as she seduces a psychologist (Jan Bluthardt) in a bar. Things only get stranger from there, and the less you know about the film’s proceedings, the better.
Luz is a veritable master class in microbudget filmmaking. The cast is small, and Singer utilizes only a few locations, relying on theatrical devices (pantomime, specifically) to transport the viewer to different places around the city (this isn’t a gimmick, either; Singer roots the need for these re-enactments of past events into the story). Sound, lighting effects, and Singer’s ever-moving (but non-obtrusively so) camera all play their part as well, helping the action to feel more expansive than it actually is. Singer also utilizes a fog machine to ratchet up the terror toward the end of the film. Any up-and-coming filmmaker seeking examples of how to do a lot with very little should certainly check out Luz.
Maybe the most “expensive” aspect of the film is the fact it was shot on film, rather than digital—16mm, to be exact, giving Luz an overall lurid, almost Grindhouse feel, with its grain and imperfections. The cinematography of Paul Faltz features a bright, almost surreal color palette, recalling the works of Dario Argento and his frequent cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, and the score by Simon Waskow is reminiscent of the works of John Carpenter and the synthwave music movement. The overall setting seems to be the 1980s (the psychologist, Dr. Rossini, uses a beeper, and there’s a noticeable lack of cell phones), and given the aesthetics mentioned above, Luz very much feels like a film straight out of the 80s, without feeling overly nostalgic or referential (and, again, eschewing the graphic violence usually present in 80s horror films).
Last but not least, each actor in the film delivers exceptional performances, including the heretofore unmentioned Johannes Benecke as a devout translator, Nadja Stübiger as a no-nonsense detective, and Lilli Lorenz as another classmate from Luz’s dark past. There isn’t a weak link in the film, though Luana Velis’s turn as Luz is especially noteworthy. She spectacularly balances a kind of punk-infused strength with intense vulnerability—an air of toughness undercut by an increasingly palpable unworldliness, a knowing that she cannot outrun the evil on her heels, that, as much as it terrifies her, she must fight. This is also Velis’s first feature film, but you wouldn’t know it from the depth and skill she demonstrates. Much like Singer, expect to see great things from this young actor.
RECOMMENDATION: See it in the theater, and buy it on Blu-Ray/Digital when it comes out. It’s a complex film that demands multiple viewings.
PAIR WITH: Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, Oz Perkins’s The Blackcoat’s Daughter, as well as any of the other debut features mentioned above.
Read on for a spoiler-rich analysis of the film below
In addition to all the fine elements listed above, Luz is also a great example of a subversive demonic possession narrative, in the tradition of (and as good as) the two recommended films, Possession and The Blackcoat’s Daughter. In all three films, the evil, the strange, and the otherworldly serve not as a point of turmoil for the main female characters, but rather one of freedom and agency in a world of evil created by men. In the case of Luz, the demon is indeed a destructive entity, but it is also not emotionless. When Luz conjured the demon back in school, it fell in love with her and spends the next several years pursuing her, desperate for a reunion, desperate for the ultimate union, its possession of Luz’s body. It will take on any form to convince Luz they should be together, and ultimately, the demon succeeds in its plight, once Luz is ready to let it in. And yet, her decision was not entirely willful; the demon’s tactics with her, while not overtly violent, are nonetheless manipulative, and it is telling that the demon ultimately succeeds while inside the body of the male psychiatrist, one who, in his human form, was all to willing to drink with and seduce a clearly troubled woman earlier in the film. In this way, Luz’s turn toward darkness—something she only dabbled with prior to the main events of the film, but continually ran from once she realized the true nature of the entity she summoned—could in this way be construed as coerced, and thus, abusive.
And yet, it could simply be that Luz does indeed want to succumb, in full, to darkness, that this is, in fact, her desire. Singer ultimately isn’t interested in answering this question definitively, leaving Luz’s decision somewhat ambiguous in terms of motivation. This also means that, like Possession and The Blackcoat’s Daughter, among other titles before it, this isn’t a demonic possession film that advocates for good over evil, i.e., the church against Satan. This isn’t a film as black and white as The Exorcist, say, or The Conjuring—films that advocate for the “true path” of religion, the ultimate safeguard against demonic activity. Luz instead suggests there is more gray area to the matter than we might think.
Luz is now playing at Rodeo Cinema through August 15th.
