The Sunday horror thriller month in the first round goes into the last round on the evening before Halloween. This time Commissioner Doreen Brasch travels to a kind of intermediate world, the Harz Mountains. “Burning witches” dances between dick sayings, torture tools and incantations.
What is happening?
A body is discovered in Thalrode, at the foot of the Brocken, the day after Halloween. The completely charred corpse lies in a smoking pyre and displays torture characteristics derived from medieval tools of pain. Inspector Doreen Brasch (Claudia Michelsen) and her team quickly find out that Tanja Edler had only returned to her homeland from Berlin a year and a half earlier. Her mother Stefanie Edler (Gabriela Maria Schmeide) runs a catering business and is actually ready for retirement, but son Reiko (Pit Bukowski) is weak when it comes to competently taking over the labour-intensive company.
Tanja’s connection to a witches’ circle, a so-called “Coven”, seems to be a lot more mysterious. The women meet on the mountain, sing evocative songs together and are a thorn in the beer-clouded eyes of the men in the village. Under the aegis of Dr. Petersen (Michael Schweighöfer), the frustrated guys meet over Pils and herbal schnapps and drink their frustration from their souls. Is one of them the killer? Or maybe bookshop owner Paul Kopp (Helgi Schmid), who not only has a lot of relevant literature, but also various relics from the Inquisition period on his shelves?
What is it really about?
Zapp-Moment?
“We like to be alone” is the motto at the regulars’ table of the village men. You’re welcome to stay, if you want to call out to them and wipe the beer tulips off the table in passing. Doc Petersen and his gang are a truly unsavory bunch – “We all have dicks” – who couldn’t even be drunk with a hectoliter of free beer.
Wow-Factor?
The setting of “Burning Witches” behaves to a real horror film in much the same way that Karl May Festival does to Sergio Leone, but the staff is put together neatly. The “Shining” sisters, the awkward bookworm, plus Pit Bukowski – after the “Tatort: ??Leben Tod Ekstasy” from Vienna already his second Sunday service this month – as the wayward son, Gabriela Maria Schmeide as the long-suffering mother Edler, Birgit Berthold, the knows how to beat offended liver sausages at his own game, a top cast.
How was it?
Five out of ten pumpkins – a bit too good for a horror thriller, ultimately a little too shaky for patriarchy bashing.
