Austrian serial killer social satire aims low and still misses its truistic target
The title of Daniel Hoesl’s and Julia Niemann’s supercilious social satire is fitting as an unintentional admission of the smug self-importance emanating from every scene in which the presumptuous plot hammers home its manipulative message. The latter is spelled out in the final moments – just in case anyone in the audience didn’t catch its continuous repetitions during the previous ones. Their feeling much longer than sparse 80+ minutes running time is partly due to the torturous tediousness of a film stolidly refusing to make any narrative, visual or intellectual move from its starting point. But it’s also this very message.
Paraphrasing the sociopathic main character Amon Maynard’s (Laurence Rupp) barely teenage daughter Paula (played with infantile indifference by a much older looking Olivia Goschler), it goes like this: The one percent can do whatever they want, “because you let us get away with it”. The whatever in the case of the multimillionaire Maynard’s – slick youthful energy entrepreneur Amon, his cultured slightly older second wife Viktoria (Ursina Lardi), Paula and their inexorably loyal butler Alfred (Markus Schleinzer) – is murdering people. Her father loves to go out in the countryside, as Paula informs in her placid off-commentary, since it helps him to unwind.
There Amon shoots random people, accompanied by assisting Alfred. Any attempts to cover the crime are cosmetically. No one will convict him, he openly admits in calm conversation with journalist Volker (Dominik Warta) who seems committed to do exactly that, just like an elderly game keeper, witness to many of his kills. Authorities from local police to ministers, however, think otherwise and treat both accusers like harmless nut jobs. If the common people don’t care, don’t dare or are truly oblivious to what’s hidden in plain sight, would be one of the less boring questions the righteous rendition refuses to explore.
Another is the why. Why did Amon become a serial killer? Why doesn’t anyone stop him? Why does he desperately wish to be stopped? Why does he cherish his family if he is an ice-cold psychopath? The answer boils down to the conclusion that the incessant iteration of a pseudo-provocative platitude is a reductive riff on a trope handled better by numerous films from the classic The Most Dangerous Game to Hunting Scenes from Bavaria to, yes, even, The Hunt. The latter’s anti-democratic stance is revealingly close to the neo-conservative undertones of Veni Vidi Vici: a one-shot satire bluntly missing the point.
- OT: Veni Vidi Vici
- Director: Daniel Hoesl, Julia Niemann
- Screenplay: Daniel Hoesl
- Year: 2024
- Distribution | Production © Grandfilm | Magnolia Pictures
