Movies: Das Experiment

About once a year I urge all my cinemaphilic friends to go see a movie on my word alone. I just say “Go see such and such without reading anything about it — the less you know before you walk into the theater, the more you’ll like it. Assuming you like it at all. Which I don’t guarantee.” Two years ago the Blind Faith Movie was Run Lola Run. Last year it was Memento. This year the movie to see “cold” is, without a doubt, Das Experiment.

And because I consider every member of my faithful yeti-readership to be a friend (albeit a friend in a no-I-don’t-want-to-‘cyber’ kind of way), I’m not going to tell you a goddamned thing about the plot of this movie. (I’m not even going to link to the movie’s “Rotten Tomatoes” or “Metacritic” page, because I don’t want you skulking off and reading about it). I will instead limit my reflections on Das Experiment to these five items:

• This is easily my favorite movie so far this year, beating out The Good Girl by a country mile. So you’ll be pleased to know that my “Wah-wah, there are no Mulholland Drives this year” bleat endth here. Furthermore, I don’t foresee any movie on the horizon knocking this out of my “#1 for 2002” spot, save only, perhaps, The Two Towers.
• I don’t want to classify Das Experiment as either a “psychological thriller” or a “horror movie,” but I will say that the overall atmosphere of the film falls somewhere in between Memento and The Blair Witch Project.
• During this movie my heart was pounding. And by “my heart was pounding” I’m not talking about that mamby-pamby “The Tuxedo is heart-pounding excitement!” Gene Shalit crap — I’m telling you that I could literally feel my own pulse throughout the latter half of the film.
• At various points during the film, the audience in my theater audibly gasped with surprise and horror. Not just the woman with hypertension sitting behind me, the entire, collective audience.
• Moritz Bleibtreu — the hottie boyfriend from Run Lola Run — is stark naked on several occasions. (If you haven’t seen Lola, imagine a burlier Keanu Reeves with approximately the same command of the English language.) I dunno if “naked Bleibtreu” motivates you — I’m more of a Franka Potente man, myself — but I believe the world would be a better place if all movie reviews mentioned the good-lookin’ naked people. That said, I should point out that, despite wanton male nudity, this movie is not even remotely erotic. If erotic was Ackron, Ohio, Das Experiment would be Neptune. In fact, this may well be the worse date movie in recent history.