To appreciate Hagazussa, you must abandon conventional narrative expectations. The film is structured in four chapters, tracking the life of a woman named Albrun in the Austrian Alps during the Middle Ages.
Chapter One: The Shadow We open in 15th-century Austria. A young girl, Albrun, lives with her mother, a woman already ostracized by the tiny mountain community. Her mother is sick—perhaps with the plague, perhaps with madness. She speaks of a "black thing" that visits her at night. The villagers keep their distance, already treating the hovel on the hill as a plague house. In a devastatingly slow sequence, Albrun’s mother dies. The little girl, utterly alone, places stones over her mother’s corpse in a futile attempt to keep her in the ground. This chapter establishes the film’s core thesis: isolation is the true curse.
Chapter Two: The Horn Years later, Albrun is a young woman (played with haunting physicality by Aleksandra Cwen). She lives alone with her infant daughter, surviving by grazing goats and selling trinkets. She is a Hagazussa in practice: she lives on the hedge of the town’s tolerance. Here, the horror shifts to social paranoia. A local villager, Swinda, feigns friendship with Albrun. But in a cruel act of "baptism by fire," Swinda accuses Albrun of using a goat’s horn as a phallic idol. The film’s most shocking sexual assault sequence occurs not as a jump scare, but as a muddy, realistic violation. Swinda and her husband hold Albrun down, smear her with filth, and beat her. The Hagazussa is not powerful here; she is a victim.
Chapter Three: The Witch This is where the film abandons reality for hallucination. Broken by the assault and starving in the winter snow, Albrun’s grip on sanity shatters. She begins to believe that a demon lives in the reflection of her water bucket. She mistakes a dead rabbit for a sign. In the film’s most controversial sequence, Albrun—convinced her own infant has been corrupted or is not human—kills her child in a trance-like state. This is not a jump-scare horror movie. It is a slow, agonizing observation of psychosis. Feigelfeld forces us to watch the disintegration of a soul. Is she a witch? Or a traumatized woman accused of being one until she becomes the monster they always saw?
Chapter Four: The Hagazussa The final chapter is a five-minute static shot of Albrun, naked and covered in soot, sitting in a burning hut. She does not scream. She does not run. As the flames consume the wooden structure, Albrun reaches a state of ecstatic transcendence. She is no longer Albrun. She is the Hagazussa—the one on the hedge, finally crossing over into the spiritual fire. Hagazussa
The film’s glacial pace will divide audiences. Those expecting conventional horror beats or plot-driven momentum may find Hagazussa frustrating; viewers drawn to mood, character study, and sensory immersion will find it rewarding. The narrative unfolds in elliptical chapters that emphasize duration over causality, creating a cumulative effect of dread rather than discrete scares.
In the shadow of the Alps, where the mist clings to the peat bogs like a shroud, lies the world of Hagazussa. Unlike the jump-scares and gore of mainstream horror, this Austrian film, written and directed by Lukas Feigelfeld, offers something far more unsettling: a slow, beautiful, and utterly relentless descent into madness, ostracism, and the terrifying ambiguity of witchcraft.
If you are a fan of The Witch (2015) but wished it were slower, more atmospheric, and bleaker, Hagazussa is your next obsession.
Aleksandra Cwen delivers a raw, often wordless performance that anchors the film. Albrun is not immediately sympathetic in a conventional sense; she’s stubborn, sullen, and socially ostracized. But through Cwen’s physicality and muted expressions, Feigelfeld invites identification with her vulnerability and increasing isolation. Supporting performances — notably the hostile villagers and Albrun’s ambiguous mother — flesh out a community that oscillates between cruelty, fear, and religious fervor. To appreciate Hagazussa , you must abandon conventional
To enjoy this film, you must enter with the right mindset. Do not expect jump scares, gore, or a fast-paced plot.
One reason Hagazussa resonates so deeply with folk horror fans is its historical accuracy regarding the Alp (or Mare). In Germanic folklore, the Druden or Schratt were spirits that sat on the chest of sleepers, causing nightmares.
The film hints that Albrun’s mother was killed by the Mare—a supernatural pressure. Historically, women who lived alone in the Alpine regions between the 14th and 16th centuries were often accused of being Schratten (shape-shifting hags). They were blamed for milk going sour (seen in the film), livestock dying, and sudden infant death syndrome.
Unlike the sensational witch trials of Germany or Salem, Alpine witch lore was less about the Devil and more about resentment. Villagers hated the Hagazussa because she represented self-sufficiency. She did not need the church. She did not need the harvest cooperative. She survived in the high pastures where winter could kill you in hours. Her crime was surviving alone. Her punishment was being erased. A young girl, Albrun, lives with her mother,
Hagazussa premiered at the Fantastic Fest in 2017 and later streamed on Shudder. It holds a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics but a significantly lower audience score.
Critics praise it as a "visceral masterpiece" and "the real Witch." Audiences often decry it as "pretentious misery porn."
The controversy centers on Chapter Three: the infanticide. Unlike Hereditary (which uses a child’s death as a plot engine), Hagazussa forces you to watch Albrun methodically, slowly, and lovingly place her baby on a stone and cover it with a woven basket. The camera does not cut away. We hear the child’s muffled cries fade. For some viewers, this is an unforgivable act of narrative cruelty. For others, it is the logical endpoint of a woman who has been dehumanized so thoroughly that her maternal instinct has twisted into murderous paranoia (she believes the baby is a changeling—a demon replacement).
Feigelfeld offers no moral judgment. He simply presents the act as a fact of the Hagazussa’s existence. This ambiguity is why the film remains a cult touchstone for hardcore folk horror enthusiasts.