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23 reviews in total

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59 out of 72 people found the following review useful:
Good German post-apocalyptic thriller, 2 January 2012

Author: Timo Hellmund from Germany

To start my review: "Hell" means "Bright" in English.

It is a rare thing, even nowadays, a German film studio realizes a serious, dark film which has nothing to do with World War 2 or family drama.

Hell plays, without giving away any spoilers, in an post-apocalyptic scenario in which the sun burned everything down. People try to survive. You know this kind of scenario from movies like "Mad Max" or "The Book Of Eli". However, the sun aspect gives it an unused touch.

The actors do a great job in making us believe they are in big trouble. In the bright parts as in the dark parts of the movie. The antagonists are also believable in the movie's logic.

This is the first feature film directed by Tim Fehlbaum. On the one hand, you can argue he is copying big Hollywood films, which I would not disagree. On the other hand I find it kind of brave to show the German audience that a post apocalyptic movie can also be made in Germanym, with near Hollywood quality and with a small budget of about 5 million Euros. The style is amazing, the scenario believable.

Plus, the film does not show any CGI effects beside the extreme sun bloom, which is done digitally and very good. Everything else is based on the characters and their "path" to survive and find better places to live. The story itself is not very innovative but decent to watch, thrilling and without major flaws.

As a conclusion: This movie is underrated in my opinion. It is brave to make such a movie in Germany, if you compare most of the other German movies from the past 5 years, excluding "Die Welle (The Wave)". "Hell" is well-paced, has good actors and a good director who knows what he is doing. If you like films like this, you will not get bored.

Sure, "Hell" never reaches Hollywood-big-budget blockbuster quality and the sets are pretty limited. However, as a genre film, which are SO rare in Germany, it works and it is sad this film did not have success at the box office. It deserved better. Especially when looking at the future of German filmmaking, which I do not want to be Til Schweiger-only.

8 / 10

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28 out of 38 people found the following review useful:
Both meanings are correct: It's a hell of brightness and it's a world like hell!, 4 March 2012

Author: mario_c from Porto, Portugal

To begin I must say that I didn't know that hell means bright in German. I always thought this movie was called HELL by the meaning it has in English and this was the idea of the director. Reading some previous comments I see it's not like that… It seems the director wanted this film to be called HELL just by the brightness and not for the other meaning. But after watch it I can say that in my opinion it can be called by both meanings because both of them fit very well in the plot and the message of the movie! Brightness is constant in the movie, but they also live in a world that really seems like hell!

The plot begins in the year 2016, after a sudden and brutal increase of the global temperature of the Earth. The Sun is brighter than ever and the water is rare and valuable. It's hard to survive in this apocalyptic scenario because people are in a constant search for food and water… We can't see any vegetation (just the trunks of the trees) and the animals died thirsty.

HELL is an action film that resembles to MAD MAX, mostly in the scenario and this background of the apocalyptic world. But it's well done; the settings are really good as they provide us a vision of a desert world full of death and not life; Action is effective and suspenseful, some good fighting scenes are done; Directing and camera work is very nice too. Acting is also fine.

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15 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Nice Effort, a little short by the end but nice nevertheless, 19 August 2012

Author: Alex Vojacek from San Luis, Argentina

The movie premise is almost the same as "The Road", you could see this one as the German The Road with less money spent in the process.

Hell starts in a world where 10 degrees hotter sun scorches the earth and leaves no animal or plantation standing still and so, very few humans living on it's land.

Survivors are forced to live at night and sleep in day, in isolated places, caves or someplace that does not have any direct sunlight because more than 2 hours on the sun will get your skin burned forever and die.

Water and food are scarce and our protagonist had to use all kinds of techniques to get it, this was a nice touch in the movie.

The starting point is beautiful and excellent, nicely filmed and the movie has a nice pace up to the point when they meet the "dangerous people" for lack of a better world that will possibly spoil the movie for you.

At that point, although the movie does not stop it's progress, it slows down a lot and the movie suffers from an apparent lack of new ideas to come forth so, the rest of the movie focus on their escape and nothing else.

So much could be done with this premise, explaining why the sun has behave like this or seeing what other places of the world or cities become, but, due to money constraints I could picture why they didn't do this... still, being that the first part of the movie is great, not all is forgiven. The actors are far better than you would expect and in fact Hannah Herzsprung simply rocks in this one, this girl has a true survivor "sticker" all over her face and still, you will root for her, even when it's obvious.

With this kinds of actors and an excellent first act, the movie suffers a pale second act in comparison, putting this movie in the "good" category where it could have been "great".

Still, nice sci-fi end of the world movie that has a very good concept and nice suspense attached to it.

I give the movie a plus bonus for not being that harsh as The Road on some scenes where the director prefer to leave us to imagine things instead of just showing us so, if you care about the level of graphic violence on movies you can be sure to find very few graphic violence on Hell and this is a nice touch, of course you will see people killing each other but it's rare on this one and when it happens it's done without blood or shocking scenes like The Road does. 80% suspense and guaranteed to like if this is your style.

If you don't know what to watch on a Sunday night, this one is a sure bet even with it's flaws.

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23 out of 36 people found the following review useful:
Bright and Dark, 3 March 2012

Author: kosmasp

According to the director himself (who was at the Fantasy Filmfest screenings this movie had all over Germany in 2011), he wasn't aware of the fact, that his title could lead to misunderstanding. He always meant it to be the German word "Hell" (which translated into English means "Bright"). It's a nice thing he was earnest and the fellow seems like a very nice guy.

Which can't be said about a lot of the characters in this movie. Unfortunately after a very strong beginning though, he movie falls back into clichés. And not good ones. Add to that some weak acting (there is an older German TV soap star on board who is particularly bad. The director told us he got her into the movie, but that she didn't seem to grasp the ideas they were trying to portray ... which seems to be sort of an explanation concerning her "acting") and a so-so script and the movie does get weaker towards the end.

Which again is a shame, because I like the idea and I think it's a good thing they dare to make a genre movie in Germany. Of course the director being in every city made the movie win an audience award. People even told me they gave the movie a better review because he was so likable. That's nice for him, but shouldn't affect the voting process in general. But there you go: Not great but not a really bad movie either

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15 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Post Apocalyptic Survival Movie without Zombies...!, 1 February 2012

Author: Nick Yeo from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The sun has become brighter, the earth, hotter and drier. What life remains must hide in shadow and scavenge for survival.

Four travellers, in search for running water in the mountains, run into an ambush, where the younger of two sisters is captured.

This post apocalyptic parable deals with the standard issues of trust, leadership, honour, hope, and of course survival.

Although not populated with the living dead, this film walks in the footsteps of legions of Zombie movies. Where it perhaps stands out is in the credibility of the pretext and unambitious scale of the story.

Very competently cast and directed and resisting the temptation to resort to gore and shock tactics: it reminded me very much of 28 Days Later.

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7 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Pretty Darn Good, 27 January 2013

Author: stickler-2 from Brooklyn, NY

Jeez,

Some of the reviews on here are tough. This is a well acted, well shot creepy post-apocalyptic independent film!

Is it perfect? What film- or for that matter what work of art- is perfection? It seems that IMDb has become a meeting place for all the review-trolls on the internet. Let's all log on and say how bad everyone's attempts at art are.

Do any of these reviewers know the artistry it takes to shoot and cut together a film like HELL? I say kudos to the entire crew and certainly to the cast which were all top notch actors.

Did the other reviewers watch the same film I did?

This is hands down one of the best films I've seen recently.

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14 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Frontiers meets The Road, 13 July 2012

Author: jonnytheshirt from United Kingdom

My girlfriend rolled her eyes when I told her I had a nice German movie for us to watch, however she enjoyed it as did I as its a well made thriller. I've gotta say German movies are an extreme rarity for me and I'm totally into international film, they don't seem to make any good ones I've heard of. This however is top notch from the offset, acting, lighting, camera work and pace it wasn't long until I forgot I was watching a German film. Very much in the vein of The Road but with a lot more action (and a lot less thinking tbh) I think 'Frontiers' meets 'The Road' is an extremely apt description, if you liked either of these movies then you'll enjoy Hell.

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5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
straightforward post-apocalyptic thriller, 8 September 2012

Author: dragokin

Probably the best thing about Hell is that it shows how The Road would turn out without the media frenzy: almost unnoticed and scoring averagely on IMDb. This might not be the best way to start the review, yet as the movie progresses one starts wondering whether Hell's authors could have chosen a different path. Either way, the result is a straightforward post-apocalyptic thriller.

The advantage of not having a major studio in the background is the absence of pretentiousness. If you're into such movies, you'll like it. If not, you won't go to see it in the first place. In my opinion, this only adds to Hell's artistic merit.

I can't tell whether the title (meaning bright in German) is a wordplay on purpose or a slip of a tongue, but this is a pleasant surprise for a German-Swiss production.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Stake-Land meets The Road, an original post-apocalyptic film!, 19 January 2013

Author: Nitzan Havoc from Israel

Tim Fehlbaum, Screenwriter and Director of "Hell", has sure taken a difficult and unrewarding challenge upon himself: to make an original post-apocalyptic film, and a good one. And despite what those who enjoy complaining would say - he has done a pretty good job!

Unlike most films, "Hell" keeps things disturbingly realistic, portraying a world in the near by future where global warming has made temperatures dangerously high. All the too-familiar motives of such films are there - scavenging for food/gas, water as the highest currency, some people turned to savages by the harsh reality, distrust and bonding, all of it. And even so, after The Road, I Legend, Book of Eli etc etc, Hell still proved to be very enjoyable. It even has some vampire-films motives, especially "Stake-Land".

Acting, screenplay, cinematography, all weren't innovative, but still good. All in all I've always enjoyed the more realistic post-apocalyptic films, and Hell is definitely one worthy of watching!

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Like the road but without the annoying kid, 20 August 2012

Author: Mdln DeHond from Canada

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Hell is German for Bright (just so you know) which doubles nicely in English for an afterlife destination of torture and burning for unfortunate souls.

Unlike other people that are "into foreign movies" but haven't seen any good German movies...(Ahem where have you been exactly?) I can name you a few titles that are surely worth the watch. This would be one.

This movie relies strongly on the acting for the impact, and boy are they good at it. Where I felt like kicking the annoying kid, and cringed at the moralizing tone they made -the ever so phenomenal- Viggo Mortensen spit out in The Road,I was very pleased with these rather real humans roaming the remainders of scorched earth.

It walks parallel with the Road yes, but I don't see other options for the last humans really other than to cheat, kill and hurt each other for survival.

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