Tragic History Informs the Slow Burn Horrors of The Devil’s Bath
Springtime. Germany, 1704. A lowly serving woman named Agnes Catherina Schickin arrived at the small village of Krumhard where she came across seven-year-old Hans Michael Furch playing with a group of boys along the roadside. She convinced Hans to guide her to a nearby town with the promise of a reward, and the pair soon embarked on a journey through dense, mostly secluded forest. When evening came, young Hans asked to return to his home, but before he could do so, Agnes pulled out a knife and murdered the child. Then, she walked to the town of Schorndorf and immediately turned herself in. Agnes would later be beheaded for the brutal slaying, but her heinous crime and punishment would only act as inspiration for like-minded murderers such as Johanna Martauschin, Sophia Charlotte Krügerin and Ewa Lizlfellner, melancholy women who found a loophole to attaining eternal salvation through infanticide after their faiths told them that there was no greater sin than suicide. Their morbid yet relatively unheard histories form the catalyst for Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s latest dark drama, The Devil’s Bath.
The Devil’s Bath melds the very true stories of Lizlfellner (an 18th-century woman who, after several unsuccessful suicide attempts, threw a baby into a river so that she’d be sentenced to death) and Schickin to conjure up Agnes (Anja Plaschg), a devout countrywoman living in rural Upper Austria in 1750.
The film introduces the protagonist on the cusp of her new life: the morning of her wedding. The lighting is soft and golden as she sits in lush woodland, softly singing a hymn to the Blessed Mary while collecting foliage to make a bridal crown. Her mother rushes her inside and she bids farewell to her childhood home by measuring and marking her height on a wooden door frame one last time. And just like that, they’re off—marching through the Austrian wilderness with her dowry on a wagon. At first, things seem fairly optimistic for the newlyweds. The wedding was festive and well-attended. A new dwelling was obtained by her husband. And the thought that children of her own will soon fill their quiet home brings Agnes a sense of hope. But when her beloved shows no interest in consummating their marriage—and the dreadful reality of daily chores, expectations and an overbearing mother-in-law settle in—Agnes sinks deeper and deeper into an all-consuming depression, until a single act of violence proves to be the only thing that can free her from her dreadful disease.
The Devil’s Bath’s opening scene is punctuated with a confession, “As my troubles left me weary of this life, it came to me to commit a murder,” making it abundantly clear where its story is headed. But the film is not nearly as interested in the brutality of its proganist’s final act as much as it’s concerned with the personal and societal conditions that brought it about. The Devil’s Bath is motivated by its character study, exploring the dread found at the intersections of rural peasant life, untreated mental health issues, a patriarchal environment and religious dogma through its almost documentary-like lens.
Shot on gorgeous 35mm by cinematographer Martin Gschlact, the film studies mundane moments, meditating on farmhands clearing rocks from fields and women washing their linens in a shallow creek. For many sequences, the directing duo’s camera sits motionless while watching the quietness of the Austrian countryside in the mid-1700s. There’s a sense of realism in the way Plaschg interacts with her surroundings. While preparing a meal of porridge over a dark cooker, she places burning wood chips in her mouth to better illuminate the bubbling mush; it’s a small, practical detail that signals a level of experience working with in a gas-less, electricity-free kitchen. From basket fishing in muddy bodies of water to food preparation, the work practices depicted in The Devil’s Bath feel genuine and lived-in, much like Plaschg’s performance as the dejected Agnes.
An artist in her own right—who creates music under the name Soap&Skin—Plaschg initially got involved with the project as a composer. When the actress who was set to be the lead could no longer play the role due to scheduling reasons, Franz and Fiala asked Plaschg to audition. The film does not suffer for it. Plaschg is magnetic. She plays Agnes matter-of-factly, never leaving us guessing about the character’s evolving emotions. At the same time, that directness, that rawness, is married with a sense of familiarity. She’s someone you grow to care about. She’s someone you want to root for.
That’s what makes her character’s mental deterioration difficult to watch. Unlike the filmmakers’ previous features, The Devil’s Bath’s horror does not come from gorey reveals or jumpscares, but rather from the hellscape created by Agnes’ crushing depression. Despite what its trailer might suggest, The Devil’s Bath is incredibly quiet and unhurried, opting for the natural sounds of the forest or silence more than it does Plaschg’s stringy score. Franz and Fiala are, of course, no stranger to the slow burn. Genre gems Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge carefully guide us through a series of suspense-building scares before going all-out berserk in their final moments. The difference here is that The Devil’s Bath takes no pleasure in the horror and refuses to reveal itself as a series of tricks and treats. But, sometimes, a slow burn without the burn is just slow, and that often creates pacing issues for the film.
That slowness is very intentional, though, and the filmmakers’ decision not to follow a conventional horror structure feels empathetic to the women whose stories they’ve been inspired by. Agnes is not a monster archetype. She’s not a saint. She’s an ordinary person molded after women who didn’t want to exist in the world anymore, but due to religious conditioning, were made to believe that it was better to kill an innocent child and seek atonement before their execution than to commit suicide.
The conversation The Devil’s Bath sparks around depression and shifting attitudes on suicide feels timely even though it’s set nearly 270 years ago. Upon watching the film and familiarizing myself with the “suicide by proxy” phenomenon that plagued the German-speaking world in the 17th and 18th century, I was reminded of the story of Zoraya ter Beek, a 29-year-old Dutch citizen who made headlines earlier this month after a long-term battle with mental illness led her to seek assisted suicide. The moral questions surrounding whether or not a human being has the right to end their own life are something that continues to divide, shock and move us despite being present for much of human history. The Devil’s Bath is not an easy watch, but it’s that discomfort, that unsettlement, that genuine curiosity for the complexities of the human condition that make the film and its raw protagonist worth spending time with.
Director: Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
Writer: Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
Starring: Anja Plaschg, Maria Hofstätter, David Scheid
Release Date: June 28, 2024 (Shudder)
Kathy Michelle Chacón is a writer from California’s Inland Empire. She has been named a Gates Cambridge Scholar for 2024 and will complete postgraduate film studies at the University of Cambridge.