This unique horror film from Germany is a surreal, highly engaging mind trip that’s weird and wild enough to be memorable.
A creepy old castle with a mysterious chest in the basement traps a troubled German couple inside for eternity. Whips, chains, vampires, dick-ripping, and a fiery LSD orgy are all part of what is in store for this week’s Tubi Tuesday recommendation, Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes.
Sometimes foreign films are weird, especially German horror films. Ever since the age of Dr. Caligari, German horror has always been odd. 2021’s Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes is no different.
The film follows a married couple with a strained relationship as they visit a creepy old castle in the middle of the night. The wife has recently inherited the castle, and the two want to “check it out” even though it’s the middle of the night. They decide to stay in the castle overnight and have sex… because what else do you do in a creepy old castle in the middle of the woods?
When the couple wakes, they find that time is odd. Now, they don’t come right out and say, “Hey, we’ve been stuck here, and we can’t escape.” But you get a distinct impression that the days are going on endlessly, and their already strange marriage is getting even more strained.
And just when you, the viewer, think this film couldn’t get any stranger, it does.
The husband finds a chest in the basement that apparently has a demon in it. Meanwhile, the wife finds a mirror that reflects a different face. The wife also ends up finding a giant candle and having sex with it, while the husband finds an Indiana Jones whip and decides to kill the wife with it. However, just as he is about to kill her, the woman the wife saw in the mirror appears as a ghost and saves her.
Spoiler alert, the wife is next shown to be a vampire before she rips the husband’s dick off in highly gory detail.
Spoiler alert again, we then pan out to see that everything we have seen so far is a bunch of people making a cheap horror movie in the 1960s.
Typically the cliche twist of “It was all a movie/dream/make-believe” comes very early on in a film, but in Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes, it takes an hour to get to the big reveal.
From here on out, the movie is pretty plain and in no way bizarre, like the first half. It plays out the exact same story of a strained couple in a creepy old castle, but without all the insanity.
That is until everyone drops acid, has an orgy, and the angry wife of the director sets everyone on fire.
This film is wild, crazy, and totally bizarre. The first half is like a bad acid trip, and the second half is literally a bad acid trip. Overall, it’s a fun and fascinating film, now streaming for free on Tubi.
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