Berlin Syndrome (15)
Four stars
Dir: Cate Shortland
With: Teresa Palmer, Max Riemelt
Runtime: 116 minutes
A HIT at the Glasgow Film Festival in February, Cate Shortland’s psychological thriller is a chew your fingernails down to the stubs affair. Clare (a terrific Teresa Palmer, last seen in Hacksaw Ridge) is a young Australian photographer visiting Berlin with little besides a camera and a backpack full of trust in her fellow humans. When charming hipster Andi (Max Riemelt) offers to show her around, she thinks, “Why not?” Why not indeed. Riffing on the idea of Stockholm Syndrome, in which a captive begins to identify with their kidnapper, Shortland’s picture is an old school chiller, but one that is made by a female director with modern sensibilities to match.
The Shack (12A)
One star
Dir: Stuart Hazeldine
With: Sam Worthington, Octavia Spencer
Runtime: 132 minutes
FOR much of The Shack’s 132-minute running time I stared at the screen, open-mouthed in amazement – and not in a good way. Adapted from book by William P Young, it’s the story of Mack (Sam Worthington, Avatar) whose family suffers an unbearable tragedy. Mack loses what little is left of his faith, so when he receives a note from God asking him to meet in the titular shack for a chat, he is naturally disbelieving. But hey ho, off he goes, thereby starting a whole ball of bizarreness rolling. Playing like an afternoon TV movie made by a God channel, this has to be the strangest film of the year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here