“Steirerrausch” (ARD): Religious zealots in the sixth thriller from Graz

In the sixth “Steirerkrimi”, which is well worth seeing, the duo from the LKA Graz have to grapple with a medium and a religious zealot.

Frankfurt am Main – A story in which a female charlatan and a quack accuse each other of dubious methods can only be a comedy. The fun actually ends with murder, but it is neither disrespectful nor morally reprehensible to garnish the absurd quarrel with all sorts of dry remarks; And that’s what Sascha Bergmann from the LKA in Graz is doing with growing enthusiasm. “Steirerrausch” (ARD), the latest case for Bergmann (Hary Prinz) and his new colleague Anni Sulmtaler (Anna Unterberger), is still above all a thriller: Vera Lehner (Adele Neuhauser) has an invisible companion named Cornelius.

If people seek advice, they contact this so-called control spirit, who apparently prefers to stay in a corner of the room; In other words, exactly where the corner of God is in religious households. Naturally, not everyone in the village likes that; as a supposed witch, Ms. Lehner has already received death threats. Ironically on Halloween, when the village youth is making the streets unsafe in all sorts of creepy disguises, a shot is fired during a spiritualistic session. The bullet hits a customer, but maybe it was aimed at the medium.

“Steirerrausch” (ARD): Criminalistically rather unexciting

From a purely criminalist point of view, “Steirerrausch” (ARD), based on a novel by Claudia Rossbacher after the last episode (“Steirertod”), is not particularly exciting. The main suspect is widower Fuchs (Christoph Krutzler), especially since it turns out that his wife was shot with his hunting rifle. He doesn’t have an alibi, but there is one motive: the wife apparently had someone else. But the marriage was getting on in years anyway, and if all men and women became murderers in such cases, housing shortages would no longer be an issue.

The film is well worth seeing on ARD because Wolfgang Murnberger (“Die Spätzünder”), who has staged all Styrian thrillers so far, attaches great importance to the nuances. The dialogues – the director wrote the screenplay again together with his wife Maria – offer the ensemble, which was awarded without exception, a variety of opportunities to exchange small meanings. The medium has the most attractive duel in this regard with its opponent. Vera Lehner once made sure that Dr. Stelzhammer (Eisi Gulp), preferred by Bergmann “Dr. Strange “, had to close his practice. Since then he has pursued her with holy zeal: he found Jesus, is convinced that the woman is connected to dark forces and wants to put an end to her doings. As a result, he would probably not commit a murder.

The duel between the hobby exorcist and the ghost chatterer is also a pleasure from a performance point of view: Adele Neuhauser has swapped her role as the Viennese “Tatort” commissioner with a completely different character; Eisi Gulp, known to most of the audience as the grumpy father of the village policeman from the Eberhofer crime novels, is unmistakable as a ghost hunter who believes he is on the same side as the LKA duo in the fight against evil. Meanwhile, Hary Prinz and Anna Unterberger, who has taken on the role of Miriam Stein since Sandra Mohr’s murder, have also played.

In “Steirerrausch” (ARD) one or the other joke is staged

It is a fine trait of the Murnbergers that they do not allow Anni’s predecessor to be forgotten. Bergmann blames himself for her death anyway, which among other things results in an effectively staged vision when he sees the dead Sandra in place of the victim. Christoph Krutzler is very present as a captured widower who receives the ARD investigator duo with the question of whether it was “a shot in life”; So a hit that led directly to death, as the owner of the hunting license, Anni, translates for her colleague.

Since a large part of the action takes place on the evening before All Saints’ Day, Murnberger insisted on staging one or the other joke; also at Bergmann’s expense. At the beginning, the inspector in “Steirerrausch” picks up the colleague at a Halloween class reunion. At first glance she looks like it always does – until she shows him the other half of her face; everything has two sides. Apart from that, the trip to the provinces feels like a return to the Stone Age for Anni. A permanent rumble also fits the archaic atmosphere of the ARD film: It comes from a wooden device that is supposed to drive the birds out of the vineyards. (Tilmann P. Gangloff)