Dang, should have figured that Mohammad did the score for this (since I _almost_ own their whole discography)! I feel like their Involvement is an integral part of the movie actually working as moody and slow as it plays out. I'm not sure if I'd recommend the movie as despite me liking it somewhat, it also feels like it offers little else than the atmosphere for the time being.

Okay, where do I begin with this? _Hagazussa_ is slow, like painfully slow. Nothing happens, absolutely nothing. The dialog could fit on maybe three pages of a screenplay. There is no explanation for what is shown, it's just a collection of shots. If you cut out all of the moments with trees, and mountains, this would be a thirty-minute movie. With a film like this, I don't know where, if anywhere, a line would be drawn between what is a spoiler, and what is just a basic detail, because there is no substance. That being said, I'm going to write out all that transpires within the film. [spoiler]A mother, and daughter (Albrun) live in a remote house in the woods. Men gather outside one night and call them witches. The mother becomes sick, possibly molests her daughter, she dies. Many years later, Albrun is still living in the house, but with a baby. Albrun goes into town to sell goat milk, and kids throw rocks at her and call her a witch. Swinda, a villager, tells the boys to stop, and she walks with Albrun. Albrun goes to see a guy, who gives her a skull, maybe her mother's - who knows! Albrun milks goats. Swinda, and Albrun talk, and Swinda mentions that heathens, and jews, in the area, rape and impregnate women - insinuating that's how Albrun's baby was conceived . Swinda then gets a guy to... possibly rape Albrun - it's totally unclear what happens. Swinda says that Albrun stinks - for reasons. Albrun finds what is probably goat skin, rolled into a ball, containing a heart - maybe... something... what do you want from me?Albrun puts a dead rat in a stream - likely the town's water supply - then pisses on it. We see a monk wheeling a dead body over to a pile of dead bodies - likely from the rat-piss water. Albrun goes deep into the woods, eats a mushroom, goes into a pond, drowns her baby, sees her mother in the water, something with blood - it's a mirky mess. Albrun goes home. She finds her dead baby, then eats her corpse, she pukes, the mushrooms kick in - wait, does that mean they hadn't already kicked in while she was in the woods? She sees her mother, either as a ghost or a hallucination - who cares? She leaves the house, and possibly bursts into flames - the shot is so far away it's next to impossible to discern what is going on... look, something or someone is on fire. The end.[/spoiler] So, that's the entire movie. Seriously. I shouldn't be able to transcribe all of the action from a 102-minute movie in a paragraph. I take it the movie is supposed to be about grief, isolation, and hating outsiders, but that can all be conveyed with dialog, and a story that is clear. I hate to tell Lukas Feigelfeld this, but he can still make a movie with trees, mountains, slow one-take shots of people doing nothing, and have characters talk; you know, have a story in there. Just being cryptic does not make your movie better than all the other films that bothered to write a fleshed-out screenplay. Lazy, boring writing is not the same as depth. Come on, even arthouse snobs have to admit this one is garbage.

i enjoyed the movie. it's about what you see and your interpretation of what you see. I'd like to read some deeper thoughts about it.

This was on a watchlist I had...then I took it OFF the watchlist and decided I wasn't going to waste time on it...then I stumbled across it on Tubi and decided _"What the hey...everything else I'm watching sucks; what's one more bad movie?"_ This is going to sound really weird but let me try to explain… First off, this film isn't for everyone. A lot - maybe even most - will find this dreadfully, painfully slow and boring...and for good reason. It moves at the speed of a glacier. Here's where I'm going to sound really confusing: As a movie, this thing sucked; as a viewing experience, however, I've had few that could surpass this. Seriously. If you watch this expecting a good movie, chances are very high that you're going to be very disappointed, possibly even angry that you sat through this. The story is very disjointed, very open to interpretation, not at all "cut and dried", and like mentioned earlier, it moves at a snail's pace. It's AGONIZINGLY slow. I was eating dinner and taking my time, felt like I was probably around the halfway mark and paused it...only to discover I had only watched the first 25 minutes. I almost turned it off but I'm glad I didn't. Again, as a "movie" this is (IMO) a total failure. There's no rhyme or reason to ANY of it; no backstory, no explanations, no NOTHING... it is all very open to interpretation. I didn't like the beginning, the middle, or the conclusion: it all just absolutely sucked. As a "viewing experience", however, I have to confess that this thing was positively engrossing; yes, there was hardly any dialogue (as I mentioned, there was no story really to build "dialogue" around) and the pacing was atrocious. But the cinematography, the musical score - or utter silence in some scenes - and the pure art of Aleksandra Cwen (as "Albrun") was enough to keep me mesmerized. I've never seen her (and probably never will) in anything else but here, she absolutely sparkled. Her facial expressions, her EYES, some of the most stoic, unemotional moments in cinema you'll ever experience...but here, you will do just that: EXPERIENCE it. She - and the film - draw you into their silent world and you feel surrounded by the emptiness, the despair, the loss of EVERYTHING. The scenes in "Act 3" (I guess that's what you'd call it? "Blood") were incredible and again, I have to tip my hat to Aleksandra Cwen as she walked in places (I'm speaking very literally now) that a lot of today's Hollywood spoiled divas would never deign to set their pampered pedi'd tootsies. The musical score (or, again, in many scenes, the utter silence) was pure art form as it only served to make the cinema that much darker, instead of trying to steal the scene. There's little that can be said about the "acting" because there was so little of it, honestly. In my estimation, Aleksandra Cwen singlehandedly carried this film and got every bit of mileage she could eke out of it...and she did it in spectacular fashion. I'm warning you now: If you go into this expecting to watch a "good horror movie", you're going to be frustrated and probably even mad at spending an hour and a half on this. There's no story...although I suppose the filmmakers can argue that there _was_ one and I just "didn't get it". And that may be the case. But am I disappointed that I watched it? Not on your life; it was beautiful cinema and well worth sitting through and I feel certain there was some kind of story that I just didn't get, but I enjoyed watching this anyway and yes, I might even consider watching it again. Before you chalk me up as some hoity-toity snot-nosed artsy-fartsy "trying to find a beautiful story in everything", I should tell you to look at my viewing history: I watch a little of almost everything and very little (if any!) would be considered "artsy-fartsy". I don't get into those kind of films. And frankly, with _Hagazussa_ being so open to interpretation, I was considerably disappointed and put off...but it was still great viewing and I'm frankly glad that I sat through it. I would recommend it only to those who truly enjoy good cinema, and don't need a black-and-white "story" in everything they watch.