Hell (2011) Reviews

• Good German post-apocalyptic thriller

  timo-hellmund2012-01-02

  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

• Pretty Darn Good

  stickler-22013-01-27

  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.

• Enjoyable watch - but a little sparse

  thekarmicnomad2013-04-20

  No matter what the language I do love a post apocalyptic thriller. This has an excellent start, and kept my interest right up to the credits. The backdrop is set very efficiently in the first few minutes of the opening scene, where we meet the main characters. The characters are intriguing (and as it turns out) quite believable. As the title may suggest this particular post apocalyptic world is fairly hazardous (aren't they always) and there is a good degree of tension as the characters try to deal with a hostile environment, and each other. Great acting, no special effects. We aren't treated to a deserted Berlin sequence but the settings in the countryside are simple and professionally handled - you can almost taste the dust. The only two gripes I have with the film is about a quarter of it is shot in darkness which I don't approve of, and I wanted the action to last a bit longer. If you are a fan of post apocalyptic movies then this is a must see

• Nice Effort, a little short by the end but nice nevertheless

  tecnogaming2012-08-19

  The movie premise is almost the same as "The Road", you could see this one as the German The Road with less money spent in the process. Hell starts in a world where 10 degrees hotter sun scorches the earth and leaves no animal or plantation standing still and so, very few humans living on it's land. Survivors are forced to live at night and sleep in day, in isolated places, caves or someplace that does not have any direct sunlight because more than 2 hours on the sun will get your skin burned forever and die. Water and food are scarce and our protagonist had to use all kinds of techniques to get it, this was a nice touch in the movie. The starting point is beautiful and excellent, nicely filmed and the movie has a nice pace up to the point when they meet the "dangerous people" for lack of a better world that will possibly spoil the movie for you. At that point, although the movie does not stop it's progress, it slows down a lot and the movie suffers from an apparent lack of new ideas to come forth so, the rest of the movie focus on their escape and nothing else. So much could be done with this premise, explaining why the sun has behave like this or seeing what other places of the world or cities become, but, due to money constraints I could picture why they didn't do this... still, being that the first part of the movie is great, not all is forgiven. The actors are far better than you would expect and in fact Hannah Herzsprung simply rocks in this one, this girl has a true survivor "sticker" all over her face and still, you will root for her, even when it's obvious. With this kinds of actors and an excellent first act, the movie suffers a pale second act in comparison, putting this movie in the "good" category where it could have been "great". Still, nice sci-fi end of the world movie that has a very good concept and nice suspense attached to it. I give the movie a plus bonus for not being that harsh as The Road on some scenes where the director prefer to leave us to imagine things instead of just showing us so, if you care about the level of graphic violence on movies you can be sure to find very few graphic violence on Hell and this is a nice touch, of course you will see people killing each other but it's rare on this one and when it happens it's done without blood or shocking scenes like The Road does. 80% suspense and guaranteed to like if this is your style. If you don't know what to watch on a Sunday night, this one is a sure bet even with it's flaws.

• straightforward post-apocalyptic thriller

  dragokin2012-09-08

  Probably the best thing about Hell is that it shows how The Road would turn out without the media frenzy: almost unnoticed and scoring averagely on IMDb. This might not be the best way to start the review, yet as the movie progresses one starts wondering whether Hell's authors could have chosen a different path. Either way, the result is a straightforward post-apocalyptic thriller. The advantage of not having a major studio in the background is the absence of pretentiousness. If you're into such movies, you'll like it. If not, you won't go to see it in the first place. In my opinion, this only adds to Hell's artistic merit. I can't tell whether the title (meaning bright in German) is a wordplay on purpose or a slip of a tongue, but this is a pleasant surprise for a German-Swiss production.