The Phantom of the Monastery

A macabre story of a young married couple and their friend who get lost in the woods and have to spend the night in an old monastery with strange monks and a mysterious room that they are advised to stay far away from. Unfortunately, the three main characters are quite bland, the directing is rather mediocre even in the context of 1930s horror movies, and the film relies heavily on dialogue instead of building suspense through the creation of scary scenes. The plot drags and neither the silent monks nor the interiors of the old monastery can keep up the gothic atmosphere on their own. The only interesting thing is that the whole horror element is present in the film primarily to serve as a moralizing device to deter one of the protagonists from violating the last of the Ten Commandments, i.e. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife”. (26/08/2021)

The Phantom of the Convent is a movie with a very simple narrative that is a moral tale wrapped up in all the trappings of a gothic horror movie. The movie has very little in the way of a plot, so if you do not get lost in its mysterious atmosphere straight away, you are probably not going to find this very impressive. [KVIFF 2021] (02/09/2021)