‘It is imperative that the move happens tonight…’
Nazisploitation movies go back as far as WWII itself. Whenever a horrific historical event occurs, art, and therefore cinema, will attempt to make sense of it in whatever way that it can. For the holocaust, these attempts have veered wildly from worthy critically acclaimed fare such as Son of Saul and Schindler’s List to insane horror movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS or Dead Snow (neither of which I have seen). As someone who has visited Auschwitz and has gazed forebodingly at the building in which Josef Mengele carried out his deranged experiments, I’m in no hurry to catch a Nazisploitation film about the Angel of Death himself. And yet, here we are…
When Second Chance Moving Company are given until dawn to clear out a mysterious Victorian mansion, with the proviso that they don’t enter the attic or the cellar, it is clear that something is wrong. It is also clear that the three movers, devoted family man Carlos (Bryce Fernelius), his outspoken friend Imani (Morgan Alexandria) and their seemingly goodhearted boss Ryan (Albert Schillinger) are all hiding a murky past. What is less sure (although not for long) is the identity of the strange old man (Michael Flynn) with the thick German accent that owns the house.
Spoiler. The old man is Josef Mengele. Kept alive by the injecting the serum of those that have suffered the most. Namely black people and Jews. If that feels like a sentence that is in bad taste, it’s not presented any better in the movie. As someone who firmly believes that art should have no limits and everything is on the table, I found the subject matter here hard to stomach. Not because of the content itself, but in the way that it is handled. A lot of the gorier sequences end up being played for laughs (whether this is intentional or not is another story), and both the painfully on-the-nose writing and the low quality acting do nothing to improve matters.
There is a glimmer of an interesting idea somewhere deep in the bowels of Jerren Lauder’s film, but the execution is all wrong. Even at only 80 minutes, Stay Out of the Attic (or Stay Out of the F**king Attic as it is needlessly stylised in some places) outstays its welcome. Skip it.