Masking Threshold is a 2021 English-language Austrian horror film directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner, and produced by art group monochrom.
Horror and sound play an essential role in the film. Grenzfurthner says that Masking Threshold forms a trilogy with Razzennest and his upcoming film Solvent.
Plot
A skeptic IT worker tries to cure his harrowing hearing impairment by conducting a series of experiments in his makeshift home lab.
The film combines the style of a chamber play, a scientific procedural and the aesthetic of unboxing or DIY YouTube videos, with body horror elements and techniques known from experimental film. Grenzfurthner sees the film in the tradition of extreme cinema, but presents elements of psychological horror.
In an interview with Thomas Kaestle, Grenzfurthner talks about his motivation.
Masking Threshold is a film about a suffering but stubborn and willful person whose perspective of the world and whose beliefs are turned upside down, whose dogmas are turned against the world and against himself. My protagonist is queer, so you want to understand the societal pressures on him, you want to understand the trauma he's been through and the burden of his terrible illness. But there comes a point when sympathy for him turns to horror. [...] There have been a few excellent attempts to bring Cosmicism to the screen, but most of the time it seems cheap. The wonderful thing about weird fiction is that we can't really imaginethe horror, that the transdimensional evil just isn't the tentacle monster that looks ridiculous as an FX puppet or as a rendered CGI representation. I've never wanted to show what my protagonist is actually talking about and what the danger looks like. But I did want to show what it drives him to do.
Cast
Ethan Haslam as the protagonist (voice) Johannes Grenzfurthner as the protagonist (corporeal) Katharina Rose as Dana
All other cast members are but images on the protagonist's cellphone or on photographs and printouts.
Release
Masking Threshold premiered at Fantastic Fest 2021 in Austin, Texas. Programming director Annick Mahnert published her decision:Once in a while as a programmer, you come across a movie that is so special and different from anything you've seen that it sticks with you. Masking Threshold has been haunting me since I saw it, and for a long time I wondered if you, dear Fantastic Fest audience, were ready for it. But isn't it the role of a programmer to take chances and be bold? You may want to burn me at the stake for programming Masking Threshold, but I'll gladly hand you the gasoline and the matches to light the pyre.
Other festivals, including Molins Horror (2021), A Night of Horror (2021), Nightmares (2021), Feratum (2021), South African Horrorfest (2021), Cucalorus, Saskatoon, Slick 'n' Wrong, Shockfest, Film Maudit 2.0, Central Florida, Unnamed Footage in San Francisco, Offscreen in Brussels, Diagonale 2022 in Graz, Panic Fest 2022, and Fantaspoa 2002 screened the film.
Distribution
Drafthouse Films is distributing the film in the United States. It had a limited theatrical release in October 2022, and was released digitally on 7 October 2022.