20 Fantastic German Horror Films You Must See Before You Die

The Angels’ Melancholia (aka Melancholie der Engel) is quite the notorious film, directed, not coincidentally, by an equally controversial filmmaker, Marian Dora (see also Cannibal, Debris Documentar, and Reise nach Agatis). Clocking over two hours of length, this film is an epic portrait of pain and suffering.

Feeling his mortality and fearing that he's nearing the end of his life, Katze decides to meet up with some old friends at a house in which they used to spend time delving into dark pleasures. The group decides to allow Katze to go out in style as their fun turns increasingly immoral and horrific. Animal cruelty, murder, and masturbating to dead bodies ensue. There is also a particularly unsettling scene featuring a young woman defecating on a young man as he licks her backside.

If you like art films as well as scatological torture of young women (you have to like both), and you can handle pretentious dialogue and depictions of real animal death (a lot of criteria to fill here), you should give Melancholia a try. This film pretty much spits in the face of public morality - a cynical and philosophical ode to violence and depraved sexuality. Poetic, radical, unwieldy and impossible to forget.