It is always a great pleasure to listen to the literary critic Denis Scheck on the ARD program “Druckfrisch” with his linguistically polished, biting and pointed short comments on the current top 10 of the SPIEGEL bestseller list. The book reviewer has always been unkind to Sebastian Fitzek's thrillers, which regularly appear at the top of the sales rankings and are popular with fans because of their twist-filled plots – and regularly dismisses them as “violent pornography” or “trash”. So Scheck's comments on the thriller “The Way Home”, published in 2020, which was at number 1 eleven weeks in a row, were not surprising: “I haven't felt so sullied, disgusted and contaminated after reading a novel in a long time,” Scheck commented caustically and attested that the novel had a language “that is constantly amused by the atrocities described”.
The Amazon Prime Video Production “Sebastian Fitzek's The Way Home“ is now far from emulating “Saw”, “Hostel” and Co. when it comes to violent pornography – and script writer Susanne Schneider also fixed overly clumsy dialogues from the original. “Oderbruch” director Adolfo J. Kolmerer only uses occasional bloody scenes in his dark thriller, but above all a dense atmosphere. At the same time, however, he has to contend with figures drawn in a very woodcut-like manner. And as in the literary original, a lot of things in the film seem to be very constructed, which is why it's probably better not to question the logic too persistently.
The calendar killer always gives his female victims a choice: either she or her (beating) husband!
On the evening of St. Nicholas Day, Jules Tannberg (Sabin Tambrea), who has been traumatized since the death of his wife, works as a volunteer for the “escort phone.” Women can call the hotline if they need a listening ear or advice in a (possibly) threatening situation on the way home. Jules soon has Klara Vernet (Luise Heyer), who is reluctant to talk to him, on the line. The lawyer and mother, abused by her husband Martin (Friedrich Mücke), suffers from fear of death because she suspects that the so-called “calendar killer” has chosen her (or her husband) as the next victim. The serial killer, who has not yet been caught, announces the day of his next victim's death in writing in blood – and Klara is supposed to die on December 6th, i.e. in the next three hours…
An ice-cold psychological thriller
An ice-cold winter evening with the onset of snowfall, a lonely house in the middle of nowhere: As in the successful mystery series “Oderbruch”, Adolfo J. Kolmerer and his cameraman Christian Huck relied on chilly images and a downright shivering atmosphere. Suggestive scenes such as the inexplicable noises in Jules' apartment, a missing knife or the armed older man (Rainer Bock), who already seems to be hot on Klara's heels, increase the level of tension even further.
The thriller plot itself doesn't really make any progress in the first half of the film – especially due to two long flashbacks. The abused caller goes on and on about the sadistic debauchery of a “violence party” with costumed suits from Berlin high society, which, in a reddish setting, seems like an unintentionally comical version of the orgy scenes in Kubrick’s masterpiece “Eyes Wide Shut”, before the Jules, who listened patiently, then reported on his own loss.
Jules (Sabin Tambrea) accompanies the persecuted Klara on the phone – but can only help to a limited extent from a distance.
What is supposed to give the two characters a profile quickly turns out to be superficial kitchen psychology: after the trigger warnings before the start of the film, a hotline for victims of domestic violence is shown at the end, but as in the Fitzek novels, the outbursts of brutality remain here too above all, a means to an end. With her emotional performance, Luisa Heyer (“Nahshot”) overplays her powerless drawing-board victim figure, while Sabin Tambrea, after his nuanced Kafka impersonation in “The Glory of Life,” here acts strangely stilted and anemic as a traumatized ex-firefighter with a helper complex. It is significant that Friedrich Mücke (“The Foursome”) appears most authentic as the short-tempered and truly psychopathic beating husband – and therefore leaves the most impression in terms of acting.
In the second half of the film, “The Way Home” picks up a lot more pace, with the tension here primarily coming from the surprising and – as with the Prime Video series “The Therapy” – illogical, downright outrageous twists upon closer inspection becomes. Apart from the fact that such a figure seems like a silly joke: Why does a beefy strip Santa with a Berlin dialect have a Taser in his car? Where did Jules' very late, uninvited guest go before? How can a killer be identified by a squiggle at the bottom of the number 2 written in blood without a writing sample? In any case, it's better not to question all of this in any more detail if you want to enjoy this very striking thriller. After all: Fitzek fans can look forward to a cameo appearance by the best-selling author in the role of a TV news presenter after five minutes.
Conclusion: Very dark, quite exciting, often particularly crass – and on closer inspection, pretty flat. “Sebastian Fitzek's The Way Home” combines all the strengths and weaknesses of the literary original.