Effigy: Poison and the City

Inspired by real events, Effigy: Poison and the City, which unfolds in 1800s Germany, charts the exploits of several characters and follows their eventual efforts at solving a series of mysterious murders. It’s a fairly intriguing premise that’s employed to often astonishingly tedious and dull effect by filmmaker Udo Flohr, as the director, working from a script written with Peer Meter and Antonia Roeller, delivers an overly talky and relentlessly stagy drama that boasts few, if any, attributes designed to capture and sustain the viewer’s attention – with the arms-length atmosphere exacerbated by an excessively deliberate pace and almost total absence of compelling, three-dimensional characters. (The latter is especially disappointing given that Flohr has elicited relatively strong work from his cast of unknowns.) There’s little doubt, as well, that Effigy: Poison and the City‘s hopelessly uninvolving vibe stems predominantly from a narrative in which nothing much of interest occurs, as the bulk of the movie’s first half is devoted predominantly to aggressively uneventful sequences that only highlight the low-rent, less-than-cinematic nature of Flohr’s visuals. And although the midsection and third act, devoted primarily to the protagonists’ investigation into the aforementioned murders, is comparatively enthralling and captivating, Effigy: Poison and the City has long-since confirmed and cemented its place as a frustratingly pointless misfire that squanders its seemingly foolproof setup. (That final shot is admittedly fantastic, however.)

* out of ****