Based on true events The Devil's Bath

The film is based on the book Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation by Kathy Stuart, as well as on the records of the criminal trials of Agnes Catherina Schickin (Württemberg, Germany, 1704) and Eva Lizlfellnerin (Puchheim, Austria, 1761-62).

Devil's bath means depression, a name given in the 18th century to those who were depressed.

"Devil's Bath" (Des Teufels Bad, aka "The Devil's Bath", 2024) is a disturbing historical folk drama that blends brutal realism with archaic superstitions, exploring the despair and suffering of Agnes, a young woman trapped in an oppressive society.

Official synopsis of the movie.

“18th century Austria. At the top of a hill, a woman has been executed and put on display for all to see after killing a baby. As proof. As a warning. Like a portent?

Agnes, deeply religious and very sensitive, marries her beloved Wolf and candidly prepares for a life as a wife. Shortly after, her head and heart begin to feel heavy. Day after day, she finds herself increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path that leads her to dark thoughts. Perhaps, not just thoughts”.

The movie takes place around 1750. A baby is thrown from a waterfall by its mother and then confesses her crime in a castle. At night, they gradually display the body of the woman, now decapitated, sitting in a chair, while her head rests in a cage nearby.

Exposed near the place where he killed the baby. The body is missing some fingers on the hands and feet. One of the fingers remaining from the deceased girl is cut off by a nervous male hand and wrapped in a cloth.

The next day, Agnes and Wolf get married and go to a rustic house in the countryside that Wolf shows to his wife.

That night, Agnes sees a drunk Wolf telling her best friend Lenz that he is beautiful, to which Lenz replies that he also likes him. Agnes's brother gives her the finger he cut off from the deceased woman at the beginning of the film, as something magical to help her have a child.

Agnes, upon arriving home, kisses the finger that symbolizes her faith and places it under the mattress. When the drunk husband returns later, Agnes wants to be intimate with her husband because she has an urgent desire to have children. But he rejects her, being newlyweds. Agnes wakes up alone in her bed. After searching the house and the stables, she quickly gets dressed and sets out in search of Wolf. She meets a woman with two children and asks her to take her to the pond. The children agree and guide her through the forest, but they seem restless, fleeing and hiding, which causes Agnes to get lost. She discovers a drawing on a tree showing the girl throwing her child into the waterfall and her subsequent execution. A few meters further, he finds the woman's body, sitting upright on a small altar.

The following night, Agnes sees Lobo sober and tries to get a baby from him, but he rejects her and falls asleep. Early in the morning, she goes to the pond where Lobo works as a fisherman; hoping to catch some fish, but she gets stuck in the mud. When her husband and the other workers arrive, he reproaches her for her mistake, pointing out that she could have drowned. During the night, someone knocks on his door and tells Wolf that Lenz has hanged himself. Wolf rushes to the place, and he and his friends take Lenz's body, his mother crying, not wanting them to take it away, and wanting to bury it. The priest gives a sermon the next day and explains that Lenz cannot be buried because suicide is a sin and worse than murder, and he says that the girl who threw her baby into the waterfall was saved because she confessed and God forgave her before her execution.

Agnes returns along the path of the dead, injures herself by cutting her tongue, and then lies down next to the headless corpse in the waterfall. Here, Agnes is already indicating that she is not psychologically well and is internally embracing the same path to follow as the dead girl. She arrives home late and hears Wolf's mother talking about her, calling her a burden for her inability to go out in her condition. She gets even more depressed and leaves again. Sleeping in the barn, Agnes is found by her brother who informs Wolf. He tries to take her home, but she refuses. Here we have a Agnes, already in a state of severe depression, stays in bed and does not do any chores. The food spoils and the goats get sick due to lack of care and have to be slaughtered. They send Agnes to a hairdresser to have a piece of horse mane sewn onto her neck and instruct her to infect the wound by moving it back and forth so that the poison comes out of her head. On the way back, she finds an abandoned baby in the forest and takes it with her.

Lying to her husband and mother-in-law that it was a miracle, they, out of fear, tell her to return it. Here we see an Agnes already unbalanced by stress, pressure, and misunderstanding, married to a man who does not attend to her, and the blame falls entirely on her, in an era where communication was scarce and women were relegated to a secondary role. These were cruel times where killing another was necessary to be able to die at the hands of the executioner assigned by the church or local government. Agnes followed the example of the first woman to be forgiven and not go to hell, but yes, to be murdered and end the suffering that oppression brought her.

The movie visually fills us with beautiful and cold images in a muted color, conveying loneliness, coldness, fear, the search for spiritual salvation, and death in a horrifying way due to the lack of refuge, mental, and emotional help. This is a horror and terror film, it plays with the audience's stress and anguish in a way to maintain suspense, the appreciation of the gloomy and melancholic color palettes gives information to the audience's psyche that something is not right. It's a movie that evokes the supernatural, without being supernatural. Ancient minds trapped under a strange control of what is good and what is bad, what is acceptable and what is not; where the church had social-religious control.

An Agnes who at the beginning of the movie appears carefree and happy with her surroundings, being part of nature, but suddenly had to fulfill the divine mandate of getting married, having children, attending to, and pleasing her husband. A husband who never fulfilled his duties in the marital bed. All of this was based on the research of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.

Fiala and Franz immersed themselves in the historical period they wanted to depict, but it was not an easy task. Most of the documents they were able to salvage came from court archives, as there are practically no sources from that era. "From there, we wanted to delve into their daily lives, into that daily sadness that these women had to bear within extreme poverty." However, despite the evident differences, we found many common points with today's society, with the pressure exerted on women, with violence, with oppression, guilt, and punishment," continues Veronica Franz. "All that residue of unhappiness due to repression and misunderstanding still exists." This film was based on that research of ancient records to then bring to life its chilling atmosphere, of what remained hidden in time. Strange customs where women were and still are subjected to abuse and indifference.

Severin Fiala Veronika Franz in the direction.

Veronika Franz Severin Fiala in the script.

Sipnosis de Él baño del diablo en español.

Película de los años 1750 cuando la mujer no era escuchada, no importaba sus necesidades, los director y escritores Severin Fiala y Verónica Franz Severin, hicieron una investigación sobre documentos antiguos y descubriron la dura vida de aquellas mujeres, en un mundo donde eran ignoradas y su deber solo era traer vida en un mundo de pobreza, ellas no querían ir al infierno y mataban un inocente ya sea su hijo o de otra para ser perdonada por Dios y las leyes la ejecutarán cortándole la cabeza.