Review: ‘Solvent’ tosses Nazism into the pits of hell

Quite recently, there was a Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. We live in 2024, but the event, eerily echoing the 1939 meet-up, proves that we haven’t come much further in the last 85 years. It seems timely then that Johannes Grenzfurthner tackles Nazism in his new feature-length film Solvent, which finds its main character regurgitating hate-fueled beliefs from his grandfather after touching and ingesting a mysterious liquid he discovers during a mission looking for Nazi documents.

The film, shot entirely in first-person perspective, lives within The Outwaters-style absurdity while fermenting its own unique approach and tone. Gunner Holbrook (Jon Gries) leads an investigative team to unearth old documents from the 1940s Nazi era. Set at a derelict farm, the group scours dusty corners, abandoned rooms, and echoing underground hallways. When one among them discovers a pipe leading down into the earth, a bizarre fluid and sentient being lurks in the shadows and contaminates the crew member. What transpires next is a deranged undertaking that sees Gunner obsessing over the past and succumbing to distasteful, damaging rhetoric. His body becomes a vessel, soon secreting black fluid from his every orifice.

Described as “deeply personal” by the director, Solvent etches its themes onto the dark halls of our past. With a hyper-focus on body horror, it examines “the haunting shadows of history, where past sins resurface in surreal and unexpected ways,” writes Grenzfurthner in his director’s statement. “At its heart, the film confronts the true horror of history by weaving it into a narrative that disturbs yet entertains. A project that explores memory, guilt, and the human struggle to face our darkest secrets.” Throughout the film, the moral fabric of each character is stretched and torn, leaving faint traces of where they once existed. Grenzfurthner takes you by the hand and leads you into the bowels of hell, where conviction and decency burn into indomitable flames of sulfur.

The film is certainly a matter of taste, but its central thesis about how systemic hatred seeps into modern living is unavoidable. It’s perhaps easy to disregard Grenzfurthner’s story as wartime propaganda, but such a misguided and uninformed reading destroys the art sprouting in between the film’s aging cracks. One must pay particular interest to the third act and how one major revelation untangles itself – Gunner is not the would-be hero he’s first positioned as. He deteriorates as the film progresses, from a thoughtful individual seeking real answers to a radical wingnut whose roots are far more troubling than he supposed.

Let Solvent wash over you, drip by drip, and you just might see something worth talking about. We’re all victims of such systems as Nazism (we’re literally living it right now), and the film seeks to engage in necessary conversations and force you to confront your own biases and tragic pasts. That’s just what horror does: make you think and reevaluate your standing in the world. We need that more than ever right now.

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