The first segment - titled "Final Girl" and directed by Jörg Buttgereit (of "Nekromantik" fame...) - involves a young woman in her apartment who provides voice-over information pertaining to the habits of guinea pigs, of which she has two as pets. She has breakfast while listening to the details of a brutal crime on the radio, before it is revealed that she has a bound man tied to a bed in the other room. She proceeds to castrate him while her voice-over describes how guinea pigs react to castration. Eventually, she begins mutilating the guy with an electric turkey knife...
Next is "Make a Wish", from Michael Kosakowski - about a young deaf couple who go exploring in an abandoned building. Via, sign language, the guy explains the origin of a medallion he's giving her that apparently has the power to allow the person holding it to swap bodies with someone else, which, according to his story (told through a flash-back...), allowed his grandmother to escape the Nazis. Before he can finish his story, however, they are coincidentally interrupted by a group of neo-Nazis who, upon discovering that the couple is Polish, begin brutally assaulting them. That is, until the boyfriend uses the 'magic' medallion to switch bodies with the lead skinhead. From there, the goons unknowingly begin torturing their compatriot.
The last story - "Alraune", directed by Andreas Marschall - is about a photographer who arranges to meet up with a chick he came across online. As they're about to hook up in the restroom of a nightclub, she is led away by some guys as the photographer follows. It takes him to an apartment that houses some weird secret society that he wants to get into in order to get to the chick. He gets more than he bargains for when he's granted admission and finds that they're running some kind of weird, demonic sex ritual thing where you're tied down and fucked by a sexy monster. He becomes addicted to this psychotropic 'sensation' and it leads him down a bad road, so to speak...
First and foremost, I was really disappointed with Buttgereit's contribution to this anthology. "Final Girl" is by far the weakest "story" (it's not even a story...) with an off-screen castration and an all too abrupt ending. I feel like the director was really phoning it in on this one and he was the one I, personally, was the most excited to see contribute to this film.
I enjoyed the second entry, and may even call it the best of the three. There's a good deal of violence and a pretty downer ending, which I liked, but it still wasn't all that great.
The final part provided a good enough story, but still felt a bit disjointed. Kinda felt familiar, like a "Tales from the Crypt" episode or something, but I'd say it had the most solid performances of the film and is shot very well. I wasn't all that blown away by it, though.
In all, "German Angst" is an alright anthology. Perhaps I was just expecting something a bit different - maybe something a bit more 'graphic' and 'extreme', considering it's from "Germany's most shocking directors". Instead, I found it significantly tamer and more 'stylish' than I would've thought, which isn't bad. All three shorts are well shot and acted and two out of the three have decent enough stories, but just didn't dole out the crazy gore I was expecting. I would say "German Angst" is just okay.
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