Hell

To begin I must say that I didn't know that hell means bright in German. I always thought this movie was called HELL by the meaning it has in English and this was the idea of the director. Reading some previous comments I see it's not like that… It seems the director wanted this film to be called HELL just by the brightness and not for the other meaning. But after watch it I can say that in my opinion it can be called by both meanings because both of them fit very well in the plot and the message of the movie! Brightness is constant in the movie, but they also live in a world that really seems like hell!

The plot begins in the year 2016, after a sudden and brutal increase of the global temperature of the Earth. The Sun is brighter than ever and the water is rare and valuable. It's hard to survive in this apocalyptic scenario because people are in a constant search for food and water… We can't see any vegetation (just the trunks of the trees) and the animals died thirsty.

HELL is an action film that resembles to MAD MAX, mostly in the scenario and this background of the apocalyptic world. But it's well done; the settings are really good as they provide us a vision of a desert world full of death and not life; Action is effective and suspenseful, some good fighting scenes are done; Directing and camera work is very nice too. Acting is also fine.

To start my review: "Hell" means "Bright" in English.

It is a rare thing, even nowadays, a German film studio realizes a serious, dark film which has nothing to do with World War 2 or family drama.

Hell plays, without giving away any spoilers, in an post-apocalyptic scenario in which the sun burned everything down. People try to survive. You know this kind of scenario from movies like "Mad Max" or "The Book Of Eli". However, the sun aspect gives it an unused touch.

The actors do a great job in making us believe they are in big trouble. In the bright parts as in the dark parts of the movie. The antagonists are also believable in the movie's logic.

This is the first feature film directed by Tim Fehlbaum. On the one hand, you can argue he is copying big Hollywood films, which I would not disagree. On the other hand I find it kind of brave to show the German audience that a post apocalyptic movie can also be made in Germanym, with near Hollywood quality and with a small budget of about 5 million Euros. The style is amazing, the scenario believable.

Plus, the film does not show any CGI effects beside the extreme sun bloom, which is done digitally and very good. Everything else is based on the characters and their "path" to survive and find better places to live. The story itself is not very innovative but decent to watch, thrilling and without major flaws.

As a conclusion: This movie is underrated in my opinion. It is brave to make such a movie in Germany, if you compare most of the other German movies from the past 5 years, excluding "Die Welle (The Wave)". "Hell" is well-paced, has good actors and a good director who knows what he is doing. If you like films like this, you will not get bored.

Sure, "Hell" never reaches Hollywood-big-budget blockbuster quality and the sets are pretty limited. However, as a genre film, which are SO rare in Germany, it works and it is sad this film did not have success at the box office. It deserved better. Especially when looking at the future of German filmmaking, which I do not want to be Til Schweiger-only.

8 / 10

Hell (German for bright) is a nice little German contribution to the post-apocalyptic genre. The story evolves around a small group of survivors in post-apocalyptic Germany: solar flares have destroyed the earth's atmosphere and global temperatures have risen. In the day the sunlight is so strong and hot that travelling outside during daylight hours is dangerous. As in many movies of that genre the law is simple: Homo homini lupus...

A good production and decent acting make this little flick one that plays in the major league of the genre. Good.

Jeez,

Some of the reviews on here are tough. This is a well acted, well shot creepy post-apocalyptic independent film!

Is it perfect? What film- or for that matter what work of art- is perfection? It seems that IMDb has become a meeting place for all the review-trolls on the internet. Let's all log on and say how bad everyone's attempts at art are.

Do any of these reviewers know the artistry it takes to shoot and cut together a film like HELL? I say kudos to the entire crew and certainly to the cast which were all top notch actors.

Did the other reviewers watch the same film I did?

This is hands down one of the best films I've seen recently.

Tim Fehlbaum's Hell depicts planet Earth as a barren, desolate wasteland that was once infested with blooming life. The cinematography of the dry, insufferable heat is so containing and properly handled that it almost bathes the viewer in hot flashes to the point where I was totally willing to step outside with no coat in the middle of Chicago cold. In terms of look, feel, and liveliness, it's a seriously effective thriller. As a film adding to the recent popular but rarely impressive genre of post-apocalyptic thrillers, it's more or less the same thing we've grown accustomed to.

Hell (also ridiculously titled Apocalypse in some retail chains) has one major selling point and that's its producer, the iconic German filmmaker Roland Emmerich, who has made a name for himself in the field of disaster films such as the American adaptation of the Japanese Godzilla series and Independence Day. Perhaps his producer's credit was earned in the fact that he saw a bit of his most recent film (at the time), 2012 in Hell. Unlike his picture which hammed up the nonsensical action and took almost nothing seriously in a long, winded two and a half hour film, Hell capitalizes on character relations and subtlety rather than tossing special effects at the viewer in an apparent contest.

We are placed in 2016, and learn immediately that the Earth has warmed at unprecedented rates, increasing 10°C because of solar flares destroying the atmosphere of Earth. The few survivors must shield their skin with excess clothing, gloves, smocks, and anything they can potentially protect themselves with from the increasing heat of the sun. We soon meet Marie (Hannah Herzsprung) a young woman traveling the ruins of parched roads with her boyfriend and younger sister. After picking up a man who claims that he can help them, (right after almost killing all three of them for their diminishing water supply) the three make an unplanned stop leaving the sister left in the car, which has its windows covered with newspaper and barricaded off. She is taken by a group of survivors who thrive on cannibalism in this newfound hellish world, and after her boyfriend splits, Marie and the hitchhiker attempt to recover her younger sister before she is subjected to uncertain doom.

Fehlbaum treats his characters respectively, not having them shout ridiculous lines, or commit acts of impulsiveness with not even a shred of a thought process as to why. He makes grand use out of his small cast of newcomers and on top of that, creates crafty tension with his co-writers Oliver Kahl and Thomas Woebke using long, uncertain shots that focus either on characters or dried-out, empty landscapes.

But the kicker here is the wonderfully captured, hauntingly displayed, almost blinding cinematography, that cinematographer Markus Förderer personifies into its own character rather quickly. He opens the picture showing off the film's inherently brutal climate with no points of being intrusive or to irritate the casual viewer. It's all a means to concoct suspense and atmosphere for maximum effect. Fehlbaum's Hell has its share of ups and downs, and after a while, you begin to realize you're seeing the same type of areas over and over again. Like movies of its genre, it fluctuates between interesting and not, repetitive and enticing, and beautifully stylistic and much of a muchness. Thankfully, its negative traits are minimized because the film never overstays its eighty-nine minute welcome and provides us with smarter entertainment than I'm sure many of us were expecting.

Starring: Hannah Herzsprung, Stipe Erceg, Lars Eidinger, Lisa Vicari, and Angela Winkler. Directed by: Tim Fehlbaum.