This is three tales from Germany. The film has subtitles and the last two segments were mostly in English. The first film was extremely boring as we watch the boring life of a girl as she narrates about her three legged hamster Mucki as she calmly tortures and mutilates her bonded father in the other room. The second film concerns a magical amulet in the possession of a mute couple who are harassed by hooligans. The third episode and longest by far was about a photographer who meets a girl on line and joins a special sex club.

I found the entertainment value to be light even though the topics were unique in a general sense of the term. I never developed any connection with the people on the screen. Background character was not developed and acting could have been better. I am not entertained by a girl sitting on the bowl.

Guide: F-word, sex, rape, nudity

Horror anthologies have a lot of potential; they can allow directors to experiment with unusual ideas, and the short format of each segment often makes for nice, snappy pacing. Unfortunately, "German Angst" only offers half-baked, shallow ideas with awkward, disappointing pacing.

The first segment, "Final Girl," is a minimalistic tale of a young girl who sits around in her apartment and sometimes tortures her bound-and-gagged father. This could have been an interesting character portrait, but the actress playing the girl is utterly robotic and dull. Unlike the rather tragic and complex characters seen in Buttgereit's other films, this girl is a faceless cypher with no personality. There is a brief bloody death scene, but that's no substitute for an actual horror story.

The second segment, "Make A Wish" attempts a heavyhanded message but winds up being very muddled. This one is about a young deaf-mute Polish couple who get attacked by thugs. The lack of sympathetic characters is a big problem here, too: we're supposed to sympathize with the couple, but we learn nothing about their personalities. They frankly come across as vapid, upper-class idiots, since the man looks downright preppy, and they both think it's a jolly fun idea to wander alone into an abandoned building that's covered in street gangs' graffiti.

This short attempts to make a social commentary about the suffering of Poles in Germany, but it shoots itself in the foot by stereotyping the working-class characters as scary, psychotic villains. Hardly an open-minded portrayal.

This short also features a flashback to a WWII scene where nazis invade Poland and kill a farmer's family. I guess this scene was supposed to be shocking, but the violence and villainy are so over-the-top that it felt very cartoonish. When the nazis come zooming in on motorcycles, you KNOW they're evil because there's a dramatic shot of them running over a tin can! This segment is bound to get some laughs from the more irreverent audiences, as some unintentionally-goofy piano music kicks in, the Colonel Klink-esque commander yells a lot and grins like Snidely Whiplash, and the nazis slap everyone around with all the subtlety of a high school improv troupe.

In the end, this short pulls an "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge" cliche, and that's the height of its creativity. When they finally attempt to make a "deep" message, they resort to a character expositing straight into the camera. I could hardly believe they used such an amateurish hack move.

The third and final short is "Alraune." It's the most decent of the bunch, and if you actually want a spooky story, skip to the 58-minute mark to watch this one.

Unlike the first two shorts, "Alraune" understands the value of suspense and piquing the viewer's imagination. This one is about a guy who discovers a mysterious sex club which turns out to harbor a supernatural secret; most of the short is about building up the mystery surrounding the club, so this is some engaging stuff that keeps you intrigued. This short also has the only scene that actually delivers on the horror; there's a scene involving a bathtub that is both spooky and visceral.

That said, "Alraune" is a decent short but still very flawed. Again, the main character is utterly unsympathetic. The lead actor is embarrassingly hammy, like a past-his-prime action hero wannabe. At the club, we briefly see some other characters who aren't nearly as weird or creepy as the movie thinks they are. The elderly host of the club is the best character in the film, but too much of his dialogue consists of "you can't understand our secrets" cliches.

The worst aspect is the climactic scene, which is the big monster reveal.It's fine to only show your monster briefly; less is more, after all. But it's a seriously lazy, stupid gimmick to violently shake the camera around during the entire scene. It doesn't make the scene more intense or scary, it's just an annoying crutch that takes you out of the moment. After that, instead of ending on a high note, the film awkwardly fizzles out with a few final scenes, ending everything on a very weak note.

I had really hoped for some creative and spicy material from this film, but the whole thing is just plain tepid and disappointing. It simply fails to live up to an anthology's potential.

If you are into anthologies, this has some pretty good stories to tell. Starting off with a witty one, it gets better and better. The best of the three "shorts" being told last, which is good thinking/planning. The first story has a pretty solid story/idea, which unfortunately is being blocked a bit by sub-par "acting" (if you can call it that). The development and the "twist" (if you can call it that),is more than decent, but the acting might bother people (or not, it's up to you, if you care or not).

The second one is also really good, also has a couple of issues with some of the acting. In this case it's more the support "players" than the couple who are the main characters in this. And then comes the last one. And that's really how you should end a anthology, because the last impression stays with people (which could be the reason why some rated it higher than they actually would have if they'd shown the shorts in a different order). Apart from the horror theme itself, there is not a major connection between those movies, they all handle a different sort of "fear" ... and that's a good thing too.