Sabrina Mertens’ feature debut, Time of Moulting, is a deeply unnerving film about a troubling family dynamic. Mertens, who also wrote the script, has a gift for drawing the audience into a claustrophobic, confusing world and daring them to make sense of it. 

Stephanie (Zelda Espenschied) is a young girl who lives in a small German town and spends a lot of time playing board games with her mother, Sybille (Freya Kreutzkam), whose husband Reinhardt (Bernd Wolf) sometimes subjects his wife and daughter to bursts of anger. More often than not, though, he just ignores them. Sybille is depressed, and from the stories she tells Stephanie, it seems as if the death of her parents is the reason. Her malaise affects the entire household, and while the narrative structure doesn’t present a central conflict that the characters must resolve, it’s that depression that drives the story. It’s not as though things seem wrong, it’s just that they don’t feel right.

This unsettled feeling is heightened by the unique style of editing in Time of Moulting. Rather than cutting from character to character within a scene, Mertens and cinematographer Jan Fabi use a static camera. There are no closeups, and characters are often not centered within the frame. Sometimes, they are obscured by a piece of furniture, so that it isn’t always clear what’s happening. The lighting is flat and naturalistic; there is so much darkness that it’s difficult to get a sense of place. The house feels like a labyrinth of stuff; there are piles of clothing, crockery, furniture and newspapers everywhere, even in the bathroom. As Time of Moulting progresses, the piles grow larger, and there is less room for the family. It’s an apt visual metaphor for the stifling dynamic within the family itself.

There is also no music in Time of Moulting. Besides diegetic sounds, the audio design is limited to burgeoning eruptions of noise, like a kettle full of boiling water that never whistles. Although there are disturbing visuals presented, there is no flourish of music to direct the audience, which makes such scenes much harder to decipher. 

For example, in one scene, Stephanie looks like a cornered animal when asked to give her mother a “tiny back rub,”  almost like it takes every ounce of her strength to not run out of the room. The mother seemingly implies something nefarious, a suspicion that is heightened in a later scene. When Stephanie’s father watches a sexually explicit TV program and his wife asks him to change the channel, the man’s response is to laugh and suggest that Stephanie could learn how to become a good wife by watching the show. There is no response from Stephanie or her mother, leaving the viewer to wonder even more. 

It’s sad to witness Stephanie’s transformation throughout the film. As Sybille becomes more depressed, Stephanie becomes more secretive and angry and acts out in inappropriate deeply troubling ways. In the beginning of the film, Espenchied portrays Stephanie with a mixture of vulnerability and charming curiosity. The character sings songs, jumps on the bed and displays a wonderful imagination. It’s a genius bit of casting that teenaged Stephanie, played by Miriam Schiweck, looks so much like the younger actress but acts so differently. She is bitter and frequently bursts into fits of rage. In the final act, a subtly terrifying moment leaves the viewer wondering if Stephanie’s transformation, and the tragedy that results from it, could have been prevented.

It may seem strange to qualify Mertens’ audaciously original production as “horror” when it has no gory set pieces, jump scares, monsters or special effects. Yet, despite a lack of these things, Time of Moulting is very much a horror film. Its frightening atmosphere is derived from a more subtle, creeping horror, one that feels far too real and — in this pandemic age of forced isolation — disturbingly prescient. What’s most upsetting about Time of Moulting is that it presents the possibility that a descent into madness isn’t always obvious. Sometimes people are just better at hiding it until it’s too late.

Leslie Hatton (@theinsolent1) is a Fannibal, an animal lover, a music maven and a horror movie junkie. She created and managed Popshifter from 2007 – 2017, and also contributes to Biff Bam Pop, Diabolique Magazine, Everything Is Scary, Modern Horrors, Rue Morgue and more.