Review: The Corpse of Anna Fritz

Three frankly creepy young men (Cristian Valencia, Bernat Saumell, and shy morgue employee Albert Carbo) interfere with the corpse of the title celebrity (played by Alba Ribas) at the local morgue. It’s like they’re all named Buck, and they like to…well, you’ve seen “Kill Bill vol. 1”. At least I hope so. ***** POSSIBLE SPOILERS FROM HERE ON ***** Things go on a downward spiral when it appears that the corpse of Anna Fritz isn’t quite as frigid as first thought, and she knows what they have done to her. Uh-oh, they done fucked with the wrong marine. Or the wrong dead celebrity’s corpse.

 

There’s a market for this 2015 horror-thriller from debut Spanish director Hèctor Hernández Vicens and co-writer Isaac P. Creus. If you enjoyed “Very Bad Things” or “Donkey Punch”, but wished they were Spanish, involved necrophilia and only running 71 minutes, perhaps this is the film for you. I found those films distasteful, boring, and populated by not a single interesting or likeable character, and this one may be even worse on all fronts. I’m sorry, but adding necrophilia to the same basic ‘sleazebags fatally mess up and now have to debate whether to fess up or cover up’ formula isn’t enough innovation for me. And don’t get me any pretentious feminist theory crap about the film dealing with the ‘male gaze’, either. That shit bored me to tears at Uni, and believe me, it was the farthest thing from the minds of anyone working on this film. Don’t even go there, the film isn’t worthy, nor do I buy the horseshit about the film criticising the belief that fans feel some kind of ownership of celebrities. Nice try, but this is a film about three guys fucking a dead girl who then makes them pay for it when she without explanation awakens. That’s all.

 

This is the kind of film where the supposed protagonists (or were we meant to side with the dead/undead girl? She seemed a bit cold and frigid to me) seem to be OK with being necrophiliacs and enjoy snorting coke in a morgue…but don’t want to be accused of rape. ‘Coz that’d be the worst thing ever, right? Da Fuq? I simply didn’t believe anyone’s behaviour in this (yes, even for a film about a re-animated corpse the behaviour has to make sense within its world), let alone found it remotely entertaining on any level. I’m not even sure it really counts as horror, for cryin’ out loud. I just didn’t understand these people, even if I could in some way understand why they would want to fuck a dead person, I still couldn’t understand why killing said dead person when they somehow get re-animated, would be any problem for them. I mean, you’re already necrophiliac sleazebags, the girl has clearly already died once, why debate on whether to send her to the grave a second time? I also have to single out actor Cristian Valencia, whose Ivan is a giant knobhead of a magnitude not seen since James DeBello’s thoroughly loathsome Bert in the similarly sleazy and unpleasant “Cabin Fever” (In addition to being a necrophiliac, he’s a drug addict and repugnantly racist).

 

The whole plot of the film is wrong for me, and it needn’t have been in order to get the same basic idea of seeing a dead famous person’s body, across. Cast the characters as a few years younger (and have them be likeable enough to care about whether they die or not), have them merely curious to see the corpse of the celebrity, sneak into the morgue, and simply have her rise from the dead to chase them around the hospital in a ‘paying for your curiosity with your life’ kinda deal, instead of ‘three 25+ year-old creeps trying to fuck a corpse because…feminism’. Movie infinitely and easily improved, without really making any giant changes to the basic idea of seeing a famous person’s corpse (albeit a change in themes), when you think about it. Sadly, that movie is likely to only remain in my head, instead we get this boring piece of shit that outside of necrophilia isn’t remotely shocking or horrific in any way.

 

Illogical (So was she a zombie? Never really dead? Who knows…), loathsome supernatural thriller about a bunch of lowlife scumbags who make 71 minutes seem like 171 minutes. Nothing redeeming here, even the acting is unmemorable. But it’ll be someone’s idea of entertainment…you sick freaks. I do rather like the original Spanish title, however: “El Cadaver de Anna Fritz” sounds considerably cooler than “The Corpse of Anna Fritz”, don’t you think?

 

Rating: D