[Film Review] Brooklyn Film Festival: Repulse (2021)

After originally debuting at Prague's Febiofest in 2021, Emila Křižky's quietly disturbing film Repulse (Hrana Zlomu) had its North American debut at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in October 2022. This horror movie out of the Czech Republic toys with the audience's expectations all the way through. With few exceptions, Repulse is almost totally lacking in dialogue (words aren't spoken until 12 minutes into the film), making it even more of a demented mystery to untangle. 

The film opens with an act of violence. A car speeds into a garbage dump, then the door slowly opens, and a woman slides to the ground, clutching her side, clearly in pain. A large figure wearing dark blue pants steps into the frame and drags her away. There's no explanation for how these two people know each other or how they've ended up together in this desolate place, and the film spins back in time to explain why they had the misfortune of meeting. 

Repulse then slowly pulls back the curtain on the lives of two very different families. Katerina (Pavla Gajdosíková) represents the more traditional family – she is the woman who is dragged away at the start of the film. At first glance, she and her daughter Sara appear to be living under the thumb of their abusive patriarch Robert (Petr Panzenberger). The trio's home is decorated in icy black and white – in an early scene, Robert pours boiling water on Katerina's hand for her defiant act of selecting a red bowl instead of a black bowl for their child's breakfast. The couple's home seems devoid of any warmth, and instead is pulsating with tension. Sara often has large headphones on, as if the little girl wants to escape the coldness of her abusive home. 

As the de facto representation of the second family, Viktor is played by Štěpán Kozub. His style vacillates between baggy dark blue work pants (which is how the audience can identify him as the man in the garbage dump at the beginning of the film) and more flamboyant attire, including animal masks and nightgowns that only emphasize his large frame. He appears lost in almost every scene; he seems to be a prisoner of his home just as much as Katerina and Sara are prisoners in theirs. 

In sharp contrast to Katarina and Robert's spartan house, Viktor appears to live in between a crowded and unkempt trailer, and a house crammed full of muted pastels and unorganized knickknacks. Unlike the sterile environment we see at the first family's home, the trailer and house both appear filthy; Robert wears black clothes to strip Katerina's bed every morning, but the Viktor's house appears to have never seen a duster or a mop. It's also full of frightening-looking tools, crude crosses, wires twisted into angels… and a photo of Katarina. 

As the scenes of violence in both families grow more disturbing – including spousal abuse, parental abuse and abduction – the full story starts to click into place. Images of broken glass and flowers (whether in a bright bouquet or wilted into shriveled petals) symbolize the dysfunction of these two families, and help the viewer keep track of the frequent time jumps in the film. There are echoes of Gasper Noé's 2002 French film Irréversible, which tells a horrific story entirely in reverse. However, since Repulse travels back and forth in time, it creates even more tension, as the viewer must reorient themselves to the chaotic and disturbing scenes with little context for the timeline in which they are occurring. 

Irréversible is not the only film that Repulse pays tribute to. Křižky (who both wrote the directed the film) includes subtle nods to everything from the Australian abduction film Hounds of Love (2016) to the American classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

he levels of uncertainty and discomfort the viewer feels as Repulse shifts back and forth between environments and timelines is what makes it stand out. It's the horror movie version of a roller coaster: as soon as you think you'll get a chance to catch your breath, you're confronted with yet another jarring twist as Katerina and Viktor's relationship to one another is finally revealed.

RELATED ARTICLES

---

---

EXPLORE

---

MORE ARTICLES

---

---