In the next part of my discussion with director Johannes Grenzfurthner, we discuss his film Razzennest and many, many other ideas.

B & S About Movies: I watch a lot of commentary tracks, and bringing the commentary track forward like you did in Razzennest was such an interesting way to tell the movie’s story.

Johannes Grenzfurthner: The idea for Razzennest came to me in the shower—which is unusual for me because I’m not one of those people who typically gets inspired in the shower. But this time, I did. At the time, I was thinking about several different ideas, and a couple of them started to merge into what would eventually become Razzennest.

I’ve always wanted to make a film about the Thirty Years’ War. It was such a pivotal yet horrifying event in European history, and it reshaped the world in profound ways. The war’s sheer brutality forced Europe’s powers to rethink how they interacted, leading to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the modern ideas of nation-states, borders, and diplomacy. But despite its significance, it’s rarely talked about today.

That said, I can’t exactly afford to make a grand historical epic about the Thirty Years’ War. So I asked myself: How can I distill the essence of this topic into a film that’s feasible to produce? That’s when I came up with the idea of the commentary track as the narrative engine—a way for the plot to unfold through audio rather than traditional visuals.

At the same time, I was reflecting on a specific type of arthouse documentary filmmaking. For example, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Homo Sapiens—a 2016 documentary where the entire film consists of static shots of desolate places, like abandoned suburbs in Fukushima or decaying shopping malls in Detroit. There’s no narration, no people, no action—just 100 minutes of atmospheric imagery. It’s like a coffee-table book of disaster zones.

I found the film both frustrating and oddly fascinating. On the one hand, it’s audacious in its minimalism and breaks traditional storytelling rules—something I respect. On the other hand, it left me thinking, “What even is this? Is it a movie?” That tension stuck with me.

So I thought: What if I applied that style to a fictitious film? Imagine an arthouse documentary filled with decaying landscapes, old farm equipment, creepy things crawling on trees—all presented with that stark, detached aesthetic. And over that, you hear a commentary track about the Thirty Years’ War, even though the war itself is never depicted visually. That satirical juxtaposition—of historical chaos with visual stillness—became the foundation for Razzennest.

In the end, the film is a collision of these different ideas: my fascination with the Thirty Years’ War, my critique of certain arthouse tendencies, and the creative challenge of telling a story in an unconventional way.

B&S: I think about it every time I record a commentary track.

Johannes: The process was fascinating. In the story, they begin by recording a straightforward commentary track. But as the narrative unfolds, it shifts—ghosts attack or materialize, and the session transforms into an audio horror experience. For me, crafting this felt much closer to creating an audio play than making a traditional film. We did multiple takes, leaving space for improvisation, which gave the project a dynamic, experimental energy.

Audio plays operate with a different set of rules for depicting reality, and that’s something I leaned into. For example, I enjoy found footage films, and to some extent, all my movies borrow from that genre. But found footage has this almost obsessive fixation on realism—often to its detriment. Take the way characters in found footage films handle cameras: they shake them violently, supposedly to make things look more “authentic.” Yet in real life, even if someone were fleeing from a monster, they wouldn’t be that erratic with their filming. People know how to hold their phones or cameras, and modern devices even have built-in stabilizers to smooth things out.

It’s ironic: found footage films try so hard to mimic realism that they end up undermining it. They create a version of realism that feels forced and artificial. That’s where I deviate. For me, realism isn’t the goal. It’s about creating a compelling experience, even if that means breaking away from those so-called “rules” of realism.

B&S: Totally – it’s almost like they’ve built their own visual language within the genre.

Johannes: Exactly. But at the same time, they’re so obsessed with this idea of realism—except it’s not realism at all. For example, I’ve had people say, “The voice acting isn’t realistic; this is a found footage film, so it should sound like a real audio commentary track.” And when I ask them, “What do you mean by that? What kind of realism are you looking for?” they can never articulate it.

For me, this is a classic issue, especially in the horror genre. Fans often have very rigid ideas of how things should look or sound. If something deviates even slightly from their expectations, they become skeptical. Horror fans can be incredibly conservative about how stories are presented.

You see this with the reactions to the recent Halloween films. They’re solid movies that try to do something different, but fans hate them because they’re not the originals or don’t replicate the ’80s vibe. It’s as though fans are chasing a feeling from the past that can’t be recreated. They don’t want something new—they want more of the same.

B&S: People hated the third one at one point.

Johannes: Exactly. The mistake was that they didn’t make the shift earlier. If they had done it with the second film, it would have been clear that Halloween was evolving into a series of standalone, Halloween-themed horror films. But by defining the franchise so firmly around Michael Myers, they locked themselves into that narrative.

B&S: Your movies don’t fit into any easy category. There’s a fine line between arthouse and grindhouse, but if you put a Neon or A24 logo on it…

Johannes: This absolutely gets to the heart of it. Fucking elevated horror. There’s no term I hate more because it’s just pretentious bullshit. Especially in Austria and Germany, where this kind of distinction was ingrained for decades.

In the States, it’s different—you’ve always had a market-driven approach. If it sells, it’s valid. But in Austria and Germany, there was this ridiculous divide, even in music. We had terms like E-Musik (Ernst, or “serious” music) and U-Musik (Unterhaltung, or “entertainment” music). Classical music, opera—those were “serious.” Pop music or anything commercial? Lesser, disposable. The same thing happened with literature. Science fiction, horror, and other genre works were completely dismissed. Even someone like Philip K. Dick didn’t get taken seriously.

And then there’s television. Sure, Austrian public broadcasters did show horror or sci-fi, but it was either cheap Italian stuff they could afford, or it aired very late at night. And when they did show something more significant, it was completely butchered by the German dubbing process. Dubbing often ruined the tone, turning something serious or creepy into unintentional comedy. It was like genre cinema wasn’t even given a fair chance to breathe.

What’s maddening is that we finally started moving past this nonsense. There’s been real, meaningful discussion about the value of science fiction, horror, and genre works. These things are no longer stuck in the cultural ghetto. And sure, 95% of science fiction is crap—but guess what? 95% of everything is crap. It’s about finding the 5% that speaks to you. That’s personal. But the term elevated horror? It drags us right back into that old mindset.

Suddenly, we’re dividing horror into “quality” and “non-quality.” Eggers makes the “good” horror, while everything else is trash? Give me a break. It’s infuriating. Horror doesn’t need a pretentious sublabel to justify its existence. It’s already valid.

B&S: George Romero wasn’t making elevated horror when he started. It was to make money.

Johannes: He’s the patron saint of Pittsburgh, yeah? (laughs)

B&S: I like when art can come out of trying to make money.

Johannes: Of course! Look, we’re living in capitalism. Everyone’s trying to make a living, and Romero wasn’t any different. He didn’t set out to create some highbrow genre redefinition—he made films that could sell. And honestly, that’s one of the reasons his work resonates. It was raw, unfiltered, and tapped directly into the zeitgeist of his time.

Now, take something like A24. It’s also a profit-oriented business. They’ve carved out a niche and a target audience, and they’re incredibly smart about it. They package their films in a way that screams “prestige” or “art,” even when those films are tackling the same themes and ideas as the so-called “lowbrow” stuff. It’s still about making money, but the branding is the trick.

And sure, from a marketing perspective, I get why they lean into terms like “elevated horror.” It’s neat. It’s tidy. It puts things in a drawer so you can say, “This is for the artsy crowd. This isn’t just horror. It’s sophisticated.” But is that helpful? Not really. It creates this artificial divide, suggesting some horror is “better” or “smarter” just because it has a slow pace, a melancholic score, and someone crying in a wide shot.

Night of the Living Dead was a bunch of people making something gritty and intense on a shoestring budget. And yet, it’s one of the most influential films ever made—not just in horror, but in cinema, period. That’s the beauty of genre—it can tackle big, meaningful ideas without putting on a suit and tie and asking for permission to be taken seriously.

The problem with “elevated horror” as a label is that it reinforces these old hierarchies. It tells people, “This is the good kind of horror,” while everything else gets dismissed. It’s the same elitist nonsense we’ve been fighting against for decades in art, music, literature—you name it. Horror doesn’t need elevation. It’s already valid. It doesn’t need permission from the arthouse crowd to matter. It’s a genre that can be as brutal, poetic, or ridiculous as it wants—and that’s exactly what makes it great.

In the next part of this interview, we’ll get into Johannes’ new movie, Solvent.