When discussing innovation in film, Johannes Grenzfurthner has to be part of the current conversation. One of our favorite experiences at last year’s Fantastic Fest took us down an auditory and equally revelatory terror experience. Masking Threshold creatively contained its narrative to one room with fluctuations of terror arriving by way of sound and madness. Grenzfurthner latest film, RAZZENNEST explores an entirely new direction while remaining an auditory journey that is just as funny as it is chock full of levels of joyous horror.
Grenzfurthner’s RAZZENNEST takes us through a constantly shifting audio commentary provided by South African filmmaker Manus Oosthuizen. The film itself is built around this commentary track being given. So, in a way, the film could interestingly also be part of the found footage category.
When egotistic, Oosthuizen sets in to answer questions for Rotten Tomatoes critic Babette Cruickshank, the conversation moves from comments filled with the director constantly stroking his ego into a crescendo of absolute madness and all-out chaos.
The entire commentary track is filled with tiny bits of creeping dread while Oosthuizen’s crew dialogue also simultaneously keeps the tongue-in-cheek hilarious lines coming. The entire first act is basically the director in love with himself and everyone else in the crew enabling him.
The film is made up of tons of all-too-symmetrical and beautifully haunting imagery. These images combined with Oosthuizen’s thick and on-the-nose self-serving comments bring to mind auteur directors like Werner Herzog and Terrence Mallick among others. Listening to the director discuss landscapes is hysterically comparable to listening to Mallick drone on and on about fields of long grass or listening to a commentary track from Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo.
Grenzfurthner directs an ensemble that at times feels like a radio play of yesteryear while also hypnotically placing the real horror almost subliminally into the audience’s imagination. All that while constantly allowing the film enough room to keep a sense of humor about itself.
RAZZENNEST feels ahead of its time at moments. It is constantly inventive and never becomes self-serving by having a lot to say about director’s that are entirely too serious about their work. RAZZENNEST is as dread filled as it is hilarious and inventive. Grenzfurthner has proven that innovation is part of the process with both this film and Masking Threshold. The focus on audio has an entirely different effect on its audience plus it gives jaded palates something to savor. Mad scientist Grenzurthner’s confidence in that auditory work is constantly surprising and is used in entirely new ways that carefully embed themselves in the audience’s mind and stay there.
