There is sometimes in cinema, a sensory tone to a film that leaves you with a residual sense of unease. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSARCE is a perfect example of this. Robert Sigl LAURIN is another film. It leaves you feeling uneasy. Your sleep is disturbed (maybe the unconscious is probing the mental state) as the young girl Laurin (Dóra Szinetár) night time activity is. You sense that the nightmares of others could cross over into the streets outside your room. Outside your door. Even at the window. Seemingly simple as it is, the development and delivery are potent. You see children have been disappearing under mysterious circumstances. Its a 19th century German village where usually very little happens. Then this. Everyone is on edge. Laurin seems to be haunted by disturbing visions of the missing children. These fearsome night-time visions see her imagine a child-killer stalking the streets. Hunting victims. Killing for pleasure and it seems, indiscriminately.

There are lots of films put as recommendations for this. Like that. Akin to watching this. Do not be fooled. LAURIN is, in the words of Jonathan Rigby ‘uniquely unsettling’. It mines the darker strands of nature. It feels like how M, Fritz Lang’s masterpiece did on first watch. That is a study in how visual menace can extract a sense. LAURIN duplicates this but with a sinister sense that we are being led down a misty lane and inevitably to our mortal demise. Akin to a dream that you know the end of but still cant escape. The unrepentant, unrelenting horrors unfold without decay. A tricky thing to do. The interviews leave little doubt that Sigl was intent on making it so. He wanted us and his cast to be drenched in the menace like a stink. The making of actually picks up some of this and is a source of great interest if you, like me, loved the film. Sigl had form mind. His shorts show this magnetically. This all said mind, the real rationalised discussion on the film is the booklet essay. Oliver extracts the film in a historical form but without denigrating it. It almost adds to the delivery of the film.

• Laurin (1988) presented complete and uncut from an HD transfer approved by director Robert Sigl.
• The film presented in both English and German language versions.
• Interview with actor Dóra Szinetár.
• Interview with actor Barnabás Tóth.
• Interview with cinematographer Nyika Jancsó.
• Film historian Jonathan Rigby on Laurin.
• The Making of ‘Laurin’ – an archival documentary.
• Deleted Scenes.
• Trailer.
• Two of Robert Sigl’s award-winning, unnerving short films: The Christmas Tree (Der Weihnachtsbaum, 1983) and Coronoia 21 (2021).
• Booklet featuring a new essay by film writer and critic James Oliver.
• New and improved English subtitle translation of the German language version.
• Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C).