Solvent (2024) Film Review [Unnamed Footage Festival]

Director Johannes Grenzfurthner has become an unclassifiable creative—the rare, once-in-a-lifetime type of artist who crafts genre-defying content drawn from particular obsessions and his cultural upbringing in Austria. His previous feature, Razzennest, utilized a “director’s commentary” over abstract footage to tell the story of an ancient war-born evil rising and causing chaos in real time. Masking Threshold employed a microcam alongside the mad ramblings of a man slowly losing his mind as he zoomed in on various objects with increasing stimulus and brutality. His latest, Solvent, incorporates elements of his previous works and delivers one of the most bizarre stories ever committed to the screen.

Solvent begins with a typical found-footage format—albeit interspliced with historical footage and imagery—following a group investigating the farm of a missing and presumed dead former Nazi in an attempt to locate hidden mass graves through documentation he kept. However, after an accident ends the investigation and drives one of its members into insanity, the burden of uncovering the truth falls on one man, Jon Gries, to complete the investigation. This draws him to a pipe, the last thing his partner saw before losing her mind, and as he spends time with it, he begins to unravel a deep web of Nazi cruelty and occult magic.

The absurdity of the film’s second half is best left to the audience’s experience. Still, to tease with a bit of oliguria-level content (the condition of low urinary output), the occult element stems from the ‘other liquid gold’ that is favored in sex dungeons. There is plenty of cock-related cruelty and imagery, as well as creative use of the microcam to explore a pipe harboring secrets hidden deep within a pool of urine and filth. Sound fun enough? It is literally all in the delivery here, and nothing can fully prepare an audience for the series of events that transpire.

Despite leaning into the sensational, grim, and absurd, Solvent maintains a degree of discipline in that nothing happens without reason or merely to confound the viewer. As it unfolds, the incoherent moments become pieced together and simple to follow; it will be even more straightforward to comprehend for those familiar with how Johannes Grenzfurthner weaves his narrative. The brilliance of Solvent lies in its dual approachability—one can either search for deeper meaning as they’re plunged down the piss pipe or simply enjoy it as dark humor. Visually, the film is chaotically hilarious, though much of the humor stems from the dialogue between characters.

Of course, the film relies on its cast to make the comedy work. Protagonist Jon Gries (Gunner S. Holbrook) plays a shell-shocked vet trying to do the right thing, and his voice acting perfectly captures the troubled, unstable nature of his character, especially as tension mounts. Krystyna Szczepanska, who plays the Nazi investigator gone mad Aleksandra Cwen, delivers desperate yelps and cries with unsettling precision. Roland Gratzer embodies country bumpkin Fredi Weinhappl to great comedic effect. Finally, Johannes Grenzfurthner steps into the role of villain as Ernst Bartholdi, the surviving heir to his Nazi father’s farm—a gleefully indulgent performance reminiscent of the enraged film director in his film Razzennest.

Visually, the movie may lose some viewers, particularly those unfamiliar with Grenzfurthner’s work, as Solvent feels like a progression from his earlier films. It employs copious found imagery and videos, including harrowing footage from Nazi extermination camps, to punctuate the story. The microscopic camera provides extreme close-ups that are inherently uncomfortable in depicting filth—depending on where it’s shoved. Aurally, the film assaults the viewer with a techno ringtone that constantly introduces Aleksandra’s screams on the other end. It’s all deliberately intrusive, a hallmark of Grenzfurthner’s filmmaking style, that will keep viewers glued to the screen.

When rating a film, I usually consider its broader appeal or look beyond my personal interests. However, sometimes you have to recognize brilliance for what it is. Johannes Grenzfurthner has crafted his best work to date with Solvent—a genre-defying, absurdist piece of horror that will leave audiences’ jaws on the floor. Whether or not the general moviegoers can vibe with it is inconsequential to the glorious madness on display.