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Rating:  -
ANATOMY reminded me of some of those European horror flicks of the seventies like TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE or SUSPIRIA. Franka Potente (who gained American notice in the two BOURNE movies) plays a brilliant medical student who stumbles upon a covert medical society which actually goes against the Hippocratic oath. This society has a renegade faction that is performing autopsies on patients who aren't dead! The movie moves a little too slowly for my tastes, and its dubbing takes somewhat away from the movie in that most of the voices all sound alike. The identity of the villain(s) is pretty easy to identify and once the movie establishes their identity, it just turns into one of those chase the heroine around in the dark films that culminates in a shoddy ending, and with sequel written all over it. (ANATOMY 2 was made a couple years later). It's comparable to our teen slashers, but because of the foreign aspects, it seems a little cheesier.
Rating:  -
Why is it that the best horror movies are foreign? Is it that they are more intelligent and less likely to follow the tired, used conventions of Hollywood? "Anatomie" is basically a somewhat subdued slasher film, but it has the bonus of starring the always fabulous Franka Potente. Unlike the majority of horror movies, this one is WELL MADE and doesn't look like it was filmed in someone's backyard with a camcorder. Though like the majority of horror films, it is set in a college (it's always college or high school), and deals with something psychologically uncomfortable for everyone- possible dissection! Not to mention, the whole good vs. bad convention: is it a bad thing to perform inhumane studies on human cadavers if the research can possibly save lives in the future?
P.S.- don't watch the sequel. ;)
Rating: -
"Anatomy" is a limp variation on the slasher flick, giving a medical twist. But most of the horrific moments are based more on body parts than on any genuine suspense, and the only really good performance is Benno Fuhrmann. Americans have seen this sort of movie a thousand times before, and it's no better in German.
Paula Henning (Franka Potente) is a promising medical student, who has won a place at the Heidelberg Medical School. But things start to go awry instantly -- after saving the life of a rocker on the train, she finds him dead at the school, awaiting dissection. She finds that his blood was artificially thickened -- meaning murder.
Soon Henning finds that it's not just one murder: The Anti-Hippocratic Society is at work at the school, an underground bunch who cold-bloodedly dissect living people -- all in the name of science. What is even worse, someone in the Society is killing not for research, but for personal hatred. Now Henning must find out the truth, or face being the next victim.
If you're a buff of shrieky horror movies, then you've probably seen the core of this movie -- contrived chills, screams, and a mysterious psycho killer. The sole new element is the close-ups of doctors dissecting living, conscious victims, and that seems to be just for the shock value. After a few minutes, the shock wears off, and we're back to the formula.
A lot of the chills are deeply contrived -- sure, medical labs and dark corridors are scary, but how many dark hospital clinics do you see? It ends up coming across as "Scream" with scalpels. There's even a scene where Potente is chased through a darkened basement by a knife-wielding baddie -- pure cliche. When it isn't formulaic, it's just silly. Dropping organs on the floor?
Franka Potente, despite being the lead, doesn't do much more than walk around looking befuddled, or scream. The deeply talented Benno Fuhrmann gives a layered, nuanced performance, and Anna Loos has a bit of fun as a sex-crazed student. The rest of the cast act more like college students on summer vacation. Not to mention do some very hammy death scenes.
It's somehow reassuring to know that Hollywood isn't the only source of really bad horror movies. At least we got "Sixth Sense." However, the flaccid, forced "Anatomy" is nothing but a collage of various American slasher flicks, and the fact that it's from Germany doesn't make it any better. A sloppy, bloody mess.
Rating: -
They disect people like little pigs. I was really surprised by how well this movie is, especially since I had no information about it prior to renting it.
This is definitly a good movie to buy and watch at night with the doors closed. The story is interesting and the effects are great.
Rating:  -
Anatomy has a lot of good things to offers viewers: it's a horror film featuring red-hot German actress Franka Potente of Run, Lola, Run fame, and it quite ably delivers the goods. While not as groundbreaking as Run, Lola, Run, Potente's cinematic journey into the darker side of humanity is well-plotted and beautifully shot. Still being somewhat new to foreign films, I always find it fascinating to see how a foreign director molds and shapes a story. The look and feel of Anatomy is well-nigh perfect, and only a few minor issues with the plot and characterization keep it from earning five stars in my book. If you only familiarize yourself with one German actress, Potente is definitely the number one choice; she may be young, but she is a wonderfully developed actress who, I am sure, could carry the burden of a bad movie quite far on her own. Such an effort on her part is not needed in Anatomy, though, as this movie is quite good from start to finish, even turning out to be far less predictable than I was expecting.
Franka Potente plays Paula Henning, a young doctor-to-be who earns the right to study at a highly respected medical school in Heidelberg, the very school her proud, aging grandfather taught at years ago. She wants only to study and learn, but she ends up living with a fellow student from Munich named Gretchen (Anna Loos), who is quite a character in and of herself, and taking up with a strange fellow student named Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg) . The new students get an electrifying introduction to life at Heidelberg and soon begin their studies. When a young man whose life Paula had saved just days earlier turns up in the form of a cadaver on her lab table, she begins to grow uneasy. Convinced that the lad could not have died of his specific medical condition, she does a little research of her own and finds out that the guy was shot up with a substance that turns the blood into a rubbery substance. We the audience already know what happened to the poor guy; in fact, the opening scene of the movie takes us directly to a surgeon's table where a confused patient wakes up to find doctors basically turning his abdominal contents upside down. Such a scene might be a little disturbing to some, but the gore is, sadly, kept rather to a minimum throughout the entire movie.
A three-letter marking on her friend-turned-cadaver's body leads Paula into a realm of mystery, cruelty, and inherent danger. The Anti-Hippocratic Society, supposedly banned long ago, is apparently still operating under the noble auspices of Heidelberg's respected medical school; the members of this "secret lodge" don't let ethics or even common decency get in the way of their medical research, making a habit of dissecting human beings while these subjects are still alive. It's a pretty unpleasant business. To make matters worse, there is seemingly a rogue element of the Society at work, leading to several medical students themselves being killed not for dastardly research purposes but for emotional reasons. Yes, there is a madman somewhere out there, and Paula finds herself drawn farther and farther into his dangerous web. The genuine suspense that builds up over the last half of the film is energized further when Paula makes a shocking discovery that really hits her in the emotional gut.
The prominent bad guy sort of reveals himself a little early in the game, warning our heroine to stop nosing around, but his mysterious partner remains a mystery until the final moments. Bad Guy Number One, I think, goes a little overboard in his whole cool, calm, and collected closet psychotic behavior. I think he patterns much of his character's traits and behaviors on those of Herbert West of Reanimator fame, but these two characters are working at separate ends of the whole "life and death" spectrum and this guy is certainly no Jeffrey Combs. Still, it's fun to see a mad scientist-type villain take pride in his work.
Much of the gore involved in this subject matter presented on film is implied but not actually shown; while I personally would like to have been visually saturated in blood and guts, I think the lack of gore for gore's sake lends the movie a level of integrity that many a horror film cannot claim. The whole atmosphere of the film is palpable, the suspense builds up quite nicely, the ending comes with a potential little surprise, and Franka Potente is amazing. What's not to like? I should mention that this German film is dubbed in English, and while the dubbing isn't bad it necessarily denies us a complete sense of our characters' feelings at important moments. In the final analysis, this is quality dark entertainment that should please horror buffs as well as all Franka Potente fans in general.
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