The Bitter Taste

With a greater diversity of films than many outsiders anticipate, Frightfest always makes sure to include a slice of Gothic, and for Halloween 2024 that meant The Bitter Taste. Scholars of the Gothic, however – and anyone who has ever seen Real Gothic play football – will note that it rarely overlaps with sporting prowess. This ambitious if somewhat scattershot creation by Germany’s Guido Tölke is a rare exception, structured around a pentathlon with a deadly difference.

“The competition isn’t over yet,” breathes the mysterious woman in fencing gear who runs in front of Marcia’s car as she drives through the woods. Marcia, herself a former athlete who is already having a bad day after losing her job as a hunt guide tries to help her, but they are immediately assailed by a monstrous creature which runs faster than the car can go. Marcia escapes and seeks help from the local police, but it doesn’t take her long to conclude that whatever is going on here, they’re involved in covering it up.

This patch of forest, it emerges, belongs to the mysterious Countess Badesky and her family, who live in a spectacular castle that genre fans will swoon over. Whilst Marcia’s car is being repaired, she’s stuck in the area, and she ends up teaming up with the one sympathetic police officer there (Anne Alexander-Sieder) to investigate the strange things that seem to be happening around them. She also bonds with youthful-looking local fisherman Josh (Nicolo Pasetti), who shares some of the lore of the area, but everything is more complicated than it seems, with Tölke seemingly determined to pack in every narrative element he can think of for fear that he won’t get another shot.

Co-writing with him was Julia Dordel, a forest scientist who was his co-director on the documentary Intelligent Trees. A former amateur pentathlete, she also takes on the role of Marcia, investing her with considerable physical presence. Without this the film really wouldn’t work, as she needs to convince in taking on successive physical challenges as it emerges that succeeding in the aforementioned competition may be her only way out of there. Unfortunately, though Tölke has spent many years working as a cinematographer, action is really not his forte, and for all that Dordel impresses, she’s let down by the choppy, confusing editing and clumsy transitions. The quality of the CGI is also pretty appalling. At first one wonders if this is intentional, as the film straddles the boundary between conventional cinema and early 2000s video game graphics, but with some scenes looking much rougher than others, the eventual impression it gives is more one of being unfinished.

This is likely to put off most viewers, even if they generally like horror, but those with a taste for B-movie excess may stay the course. After all, it offers thunderstorms, cannibalism, Evil Dead-style tracking shots through looming trees, Princess Bride-style shrieking eels, a quaint old fashioned steam train, Faustian bargains and more blood than cinema has seen in one place since The Shining. All this, and Dordel whirling chains around over her head, riding horses and swimming whilst wearing a corset two sizes too small for her – an homage, one might say, to aspects of the genre that have always had a strong fan appeal in their own right.

Though it has been characterised in some places as an exercise in gore, and it does feature a few meat hooks, this isn’t a film focused on suffering. It has much more of an adventure vibe, and it rattles along sufficiently fast that it’s possible to overlook the problems with the plot and focus on the spectacle. That said, it’s not going to be winning any prizes. If Dordel wants to capitalise on her impressive physical abilities, she’d be well adviseed to do so with a different director, or at least a different editor.