Review of Bela Kiss: Prologue

"Bela Kiss: Prologue" is a German movie that is also mostly in the German language. It is the only full feature film work by writer and director Lucien Förstner so far and as this one is a 2013 movie, it will have its 5th anniversary next year. It runs for slightly over 100 minutes and combines the genres crime, thriller and horror in one movie. Bela Kiss was a serial killer early in the 20th century whose victims were predominantly women. This film here works with the premise that many many decades later Kiss may still be alive and that may be due to vampirism keeping him relatively young and fresh. So yes, it is a fictionalized film for sure and honestly, the entire Kiss reference works not at all in the film's favor. He sure is an interesting character that deserves his own movie, but this is not it. Maybe a documentary would even be more accurate as, eventually, we know very little about him, not even his exact time of death. As a consequence, this is a pretty generic thriller movie that turns more and more into horror the longer it goes. The Kiss reference in the title was probably just an attempt by the filmmaker to make this film sound more relevant and important than all the other horror films that disappear as quickly into oblivion as they appear on the radar. He was maybe even successful with this approach, but I cannot support it. The most known cast members may be Rudolf Martin ("NCIS") and Collien Fernandes, but the latter really only has a brief cameo. So all in all, this one is just for the very biggest vampire horror film fans. Everybody else will be mostly disappointed and underwhelmed. Here and there, we get a decent scene like the murder witnessed by the woman and hos she wants to check the hotel room despite the resistance of the owner, but it's just not enough for 100 minutes. Not even close. I would say the IMDb rating here is pretty accurate for a change. it just wasn't a good watch and I give it a thumbs-down. The acting is sometimes pretty embarrassing as well and I am not surprised at all that Förstner's career has not skyrocketed since then. I hope he has stepped up his game when he returns to making movies, even if his direction certainly wasn't the main problem in here, more like the mix of script and performances. The title also doesn't make much sense as this takes place way way later than Kiss' most prolific killing phase, so epilogue would be more accurate, and I hope it's not meant that there will be more films like this.