IMDb reviews From IMDb
★ 2 / 10
*Sennentuntschi* has almost everything you might reasonably order
FolknHell
*Sennentuntschi* has almost everything you might reasonably order from the folk-horror cupboard: an Alpine community, an old legend, lonely goatherds…
*Sennentuntschi* has almost everything you might reasonably order from the folk-horror cupboard: an Alpine community, an old legend, lonely goatherds, absinthe, a woman apparently conjured from straw and household debris, and the suspicion that something ancient has wandered down from the mountain. The problem is that the film keeps opening the cupboard, throwing in another ingredient and forgetting what it was cooking.
Its central idea is terrific. Three men drunkenly enact the legend of the Sennentuntschi, constructing a woman for their own gratification, only for a real woman to appear. That should leave us wondering whether folklore has become flesh or whether frightened, violent men are simply turning an abused woman into a monster because the story gives them permission to.
Instead, Michael Steiner keeps explaining, complicating and re-complicating. Present day, 1975 and earlier events are folded together with so little visual distinction that disorientation becomes less an unsettling formal strategy than an administrative problem. Even the Alpine landscape struggles to provide the isolation the story needs because the film continually jumps between hut, village, church and investigation without establishing how these places relate to one another.
The soundtrack is similarly restless. Huge, ominous orchestration competes with Serge Gainsbourg and a T. Rex cover as though several different films have wandered into the same edit. There are handsome shots of cloud moving across the mountains, but they often seem to belong to a better-behaved film happening somewhere nearby.
What frustrates most is that *Sennentuntschi* repeatedly brushes against something genuinely disturbing. The sexual violence is horrible, but too often merely horrible, arriving through characters whose behaviour changes faster than the film can make psychological sense of it. Later, a shot briefly positions horns behind the mysterious woman’s head, and suddenly folklore threatens to break properly through the rational surface. The final discovery of the straw-stuffed men has the same grubby, stomach-turning power.
Those moments reveal the film it might have been.
Instead, the folklore gradually becomes a wrapper around a convoluted true-crime story involving buried histories, clerical abuse and explanations delivered after the fact. *Sennentuntschi* wants the old story to remain alive in the Alps, but spends so much time rationalising it that it very nearly kills the thing itself.
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Reviewed by [**FolknHell**](https://www.folknhell.com/), the folk horror film podcast.
Hear the full FolknHell podcast discussion of [*Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps*](https://www.folknhell.com/sennentuntschi-review), along with our other reviews, transcripts and episodes, at [**folknhell.com**](http://folknhell.com).
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★ 7 / 10
Bloodwank
It is said (or at least was at the screening attended) that Sennentuntschi is Switzerland's first genre film. One hope that they make more, for its quite a…
It is said (or at least was at the screening attended) that Sennentuntschi is Switzerland's first genre film. One hope that they make more, for its quite a cracker. It draws upon a little used myth (I can think of maybe one other film that makes use of it) of lonely Alpine shepherds who sew a lady companion out of straw and cloth. By and by the lady comes to life, loves them and keeps their home, until she falls out of favours and takes her vengeance. Things are a bit more complicated than that here though, with a strange and silent lady (Roxanne Mesquida) coming to a village from the mountains and immediately arousing superstitions. Local inspector Reusch is on her side, but something bad is afoot, and events in the village are parallelled by the affairs of a moutainside shepherd, his son and a city man who joins them. The film is quite a slow burner, focused on the slowly boiling drama of its characters and the tensions between superstition and reason, religion and modernity, man and woman, primal and tamed. Set in 1975 when there were still places in the Alps caught in older times, there's a convincing sense of removal from reality and rustic unease, quiet disquiet that works well with the sublime locations, crisply shot by Pascal Walder. Solid performances across the board give the film an effective dramatic tone, Nicholas Ofczarek giving the character of Reusch a sense of earnest dedication tinged with affecting romantic, longing, Andrea Zogg bringing righteous fire to his powerful priest character and Roxanne Mesquida especially good in her silent role as the rumoured Sennentuntschi, conveying feral grace and danger with an edge of primal humanity. Things come to a head in nicely intense and fairly shocking fashion with a cruelly punching final block, although a slightly tricksy approach to the narrative dilutes the ultimate effect. All in all its a quality and worthwhile watch, though not as potent as it could be. It takes a little too long to really come aflame I think, while things are ultimately satisfying there isn't so much suspense in earlier scenes. And for all the interesting oppositions the film brings up with its narrative, it doesn't really end up saying anything particularly interesting, though never less than satisfying entertainment its standard genre film mechanics do slightly sap its underlying interest. Still recommended though, 7/10
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★ 7 / 10
Classy slow burning Swiss thriller
Bloodwank
It is said (or at least was at the screening attended) that Sennentuntschi is Switzerland's first genre film. One hope that they make more, for its quite a…
It is said (or at least was at the screening attended) that Sennentuntschi is Switzerland's first genre film. One hope that they make more, for its quite a cracker. It draws upon a little used myth (I can think of maybe one other film that makes use of it) of lonely Alpine shepherds who sew a lady companion out of straw and cloth. By and by the lady comes to life, loves them and keeps their home, until she falls out of favours and takes her vengeance. Things are a bit more complicated than that here though, with a strange and silent lady (Roxanne Mesquida) coming to a village from the mountains and immediately arousing superstitions. Local inspector Reusch is on her side, but something bad is afoot, and events in the village are parallelled by the affairs of a moutainside shepherd, his son and a city man who joins them. The film is quite a slow burner, focused on the slowly boiling drama of its characters and the tensions between superstition and reason, religion and modernity, man and woman, primal and tamed. Set in 1975 when there were still places in the Alps caught in older times, there's a convincing sense of removal from reality and rustic unease, quiet disquiet that works well with the sublime locations, crisply shot by Pascal Walder. Solid performances across the board give the film an effective dramatic tone, Nicholas Ofczarek giving the character of Reusch a sense of earnest dedication tinged with affecting romantic, longing, Andrea Zogg bringing righteous fire to his powerful priest character and Roxanne Mesquida especially good in her silent role as the rumoured Sennentuntschi, conveying feral grace and danger with an edge of primal humanity. Things come to a head in nicely intense and fairly shocking fashion with a cruelly punching final block, although a slightly tricksy approach to the narrative dilutes the ultimate effect. All in all its a quality and worthwhile watch, though not as potent as it could be. It takes a little too long to really come aflame I think, while things are ultimately satisfying there isn't so much suspense in earlier scenes. And for all the interesting oppositions the film brings up with its narrative, it doesn't really end up saying anything particularly interesting, though never less than satisfying entertainment its standard genre film mechanics do slightly sap its underlying interest. Still recommended though, 7/10
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I don't care what she is or how many people she skins....my god, she's gorgeous!