The Corpse of Anna Fritz was a surprise, plain and simple. The 2015 Spanish exploitation-horror film from director Hector Hernandez reads like a sleazy knock off of Deadgirl – as if Deadgirl wasn’t sleazy enough, am I right? – and for the first twenty minutes of the movie, that’s exactly what it feels like. By the end, though? I was absolutely surprised by the turns it took.
It’s the story of three friends, one a worker in a hospital that happens to have received the corpse of a newly deceased celebrity, Anna Fritz. When the dude’s sleazy buddies drag him out back to drink and learn of this… Acquisition… They have to check out the merchandise. Into the morgue they go, with plenty of corpse fondling and disgusting talk of necrophilia to follow. Pau, our hospital homie, lets slip that he’s dabbled in the act himself and shows his coke snorting friend Ivan evidence in the form of what I can only assume are sexy corpse selfies. So with their brains firmly set on demolishing this poor woman’s frigid naughty bits, Pau and Ivan start to scare their more moral comrade, Javi, who immediately backs out. That feel when not wanting to drill a dead body makes you the most moral person in the room.
But, as things go in horror films, shit hits the fan. During his turn with Anna, Pau notices signs of life. Her eyes are open, and this isn’t a case of undead shenanigans. Anna is alive and she’s been conscious through most of this treatment. Misdiagnosed at the scene of her “death” and left teetering on the edge in a hospital basement now occupied by two rapists who’ve just had their way with her. Is it made worse or better by the fact that they thought she was dead? The hard questions, am I right? Luckily for Anna, Javi realizes that both rape and necrophilia are no-nos and does his best to save her. Not so lucky is the fact that this sends the guilty Ivan into a rage and he pushes Javi’s shit in, leaving him concussed and bleeding out while the two guilty parties try to think up a way to fix all this.
That’s the first bit of this movie and I’m not spoiling any more. When tensions rise and shit gets real, it’s impressive how well the actors handle this bizarre, disgusting situation. It’s essentially a one room film for the majority of its run time and both the characters and actors who portray them are more than compelling enough to keep you interested despite the limited scenery. Despite its trimmings, this isn’t a movie about necrophilia. No, I don’t mean because of Anna being among the living, because it isn’t about rape, either. It’s a surprisingly taut, brutal story about people who make mistakes and refuse to live with them, and to that end the movie is an absolute treat. It makes you think, imagine yourself in the shoes of these characters. Not… Necessarily raping a woman or diddling a dead body, but living with a mistake that escalated to an insane degree. It’s like stealing a candy bar and somehow ending up in a stand off with the cops. You fucked up. Hard. And no matter what you do you can’t make what you did right or undo the pain and confusion that follow.
There are themes at play here way smarter than you’d be lead to believe by a write up or trailer for this film and I respect the Hell out of the people involved because of it. They took what could’ve been a derivative, gross premise and turned it into a genuinely frightening, intense story about the escalation of bad deeds and the degradation of the psyche of those who committed them. It’s not something that’s easy to sell to casual viewers, but if you’re a fan of small scale, extreme drama and thrills or even movies like Deadgirl, see this film.