Anatomy

This is by far the worst non-English horror movie I've ever seen. The acting is wooden, the dialogues are simply stupid and the story is totally braindead. It's not even scary. 2 out of 10 from me.

"Anatomy" tells of an attractive young female medical student who attends the University of Heidelberg where she discovers an ancient secret society of doctors who practice human vivisection. The film is an artful shoot with great anatomical props and a story which is a little more intelligent than typical American horror flicks where hockey masked hulks go around butchering teenagers. The video release I watched was also very well dubbed. Overall a cut above your average horror flick and an mildly thrilling and suspenseful watch for most. The last two words of the film are particularly telling.

Anatomie isn't very unique in horror genre, in fact it isn't even scary at all. It reminds me of its American cousins, horror slashers. It's just a copy of any other horror slasher and as a German movie it's just too American with nothing to add to it. Actually Anatomie is too predictable and boring, its plot is not intact and consistent. It's got stupid scenes to it which don't even fit into a horror movie genre. Amusing sex scenes with pop music and topless women in underwear. Why do they need to have it all in just one movie? They should have made a cheap German adult movie instead. I can't recommend this movie to anyone because it's just too boring.

This is just another miserable attempt to cash in on the current horror-revival-thing. But it doesn't work. German moviemakers should stick to their stuff and shouldn't try to copy successful American horror-movies. Hey! "Schuster bleib bei deinen Leisten"...stick to what you do best!

Paula Henning (Franka Potente) one of the top German medical students is accepted into the medical school at the beautiful Heidelberg University. As a grand-daughter of a former renowned medical scientist now retired she questions some of the unusual practices occurring at the Department of Anatomy. Working alone and often secretly at night, she takes specimens of human tissue from cadavers for microscopic examination. What she finds astounds her and sets her on a path of further investigation. The screen play is designed to shock. A dissection room is eerie enough but when dead bodies begin to twitch, beware... Add to this unethical students using scalpels like lethal weapons and hyperdermic needles in reckless abandon. Further there is much blood and even a decapitation. This film is not for the faint-hearted. The department has developed an astonishing plasticising method of preserving humans as life-like specimens. These are shown in the film. A spooky atmosphere is generated because much of the action takes place in the laboratories and shadowy corridors at night. Mention is made of some of the Nazi experiments on living human beings as if to justify the research work designed to help mankind. This adds even more horror. After the frantic chases around the corridors, one is left with a pounding heart. And in the end one wonders what the people of Heidelberg think about their doctors in training - not a particularly reassuring thought. I wonder how many hospital appointments were cancelled after prospective patients saw this film.

This movie had such a good premise to start with. Suspense, slashers, a secret society, and you really couldn't figure out who the bad guys were until the last quarter of the movie. But it contained so many dumb clichés from the worst of the old American slasher/horror movies. Now, I love slasher/horror movies, but there are all the old clichés that have long disappeared from American cinema. For example, the old "I hear noises in the basement and I'm home all alone and the basement light doesn't work, so I'll go down to investigate" cliché. Three examples of these clichés just really irked me to no end: 1) When Potente finds out that there may be a secret society at work at the medical school carving up live bodies, she proceeds to ask questions and tell EVERYONE -- very publicly. In essence, she is saying, "I found you out. Come kill me because I am telling everyone your secret." And then she wonders why she finds blood smeared all over her bed and is brought her roommate's severed finger in a towel. 2) Even after one guy she met two weeks ago ends up on the dissection table and she finds out about this secret society disemboweling live people, she goes to the lab where all the dead bodies are stored 2-3 more times BY HERSELF AT NIGHT to investigate. 3) Her roommate gets killed. She gets chased by the killer, whom she knows, doesn't report him to the university or the police, then leaves the school to go home to visit her parents. Then she returns to school, apparently thinking that this guy who tried to kill her will let bygones be bygones and not try to kill her, even though she knows his secret. She was, of course, wrong. For someone who was supposed to be so smart (she was studying to be a doctor in the best school in Germany), she acted like the cliché bimbo in a horror movie. These things just made a potentially good movie very frustrating, and made me wish the ending would come even sooner. Halfway through the movie, I stopped routing for her and wished that she would end up on the dissection table, too.

Finally got to see this movie last weekend. What a disappointment..it barely reaches "made for TV" level. Given the list of actors, I would have expected something substantially more sophisticated. The movie lacks a good story, well, actually any story for that matter. It has no credibility, instead lots of predictability. Save yourself the money and the time.

There is an endless supply of trashy horror movies. It seems that people never get tired of trying to scare and thrill. Alas, very seldom these attempts succeed. This, unfortunate movie has almost no redeeming value. The story is highly predictable, most of the actors very uninspired, or just plainly miscast, special effects of very low quality. It took a lot of effort not to switch off the DVD and go to bed. With such a limited number of foreign movies issued in the USA, why in the world would anybody want to import this drivel. To top it all, apparently there is an "Anatomy 2 ", for those who have nothing better to do. I'd rather watch the paint dry.

I thought this movie was sooo bad. The acting was so terrible, the effects looked incredibly fake, the plot was just okay, the sequence and writing made NO sense at all. Overall, it was disgraceful. I have taken anatomy/physiology class, and honestly, the things they talked about and tried to make seem "cool" or somehow realistic, were really off. The plot was okay. The whole foreign country evil people horror thing has been played out way too many times. You will not like this movie. I couldn't even finish it, and I've seen worse. Do yourself a favor and don't see it. Even if you have the time, and boredom.