I'm slowly going through a good amount of movies that were up for Oscars this past year. I also like to look at best of lists and decide which movies I want to see from those. One such movie was "Zone of Interest".

I came to this movie very late. I know of Johnathan Glazer, I have watched some of his movies, namely "Under the Skin". He was never really my cup of tea as a director. His movies seem kind of boring and the story is often left up to the viewer. That frustrates me. But I read a good amount of reviews for "Zone of Interest". I watched the trailer. I saw what some people online were saying about the movie and my decision was set. My wife had zero interest in watching, so I waited until she was on a work trip to watch. I rented it on Amazon last week and sat back.

What I saw was horrifying and gross and sad and brutal and frustrating and I cannot stop thinking about the movie. It has stayed with me. We were on a trip last week and I told anyone who'd listen about the movie. I am trying to avoid spoilers, but at this point that seems moot. This movie is a must see, only once, and it will stay with you and haunt you.

For the people that may not know, "Zone of Interest" takes place at a home outside of one of the Auschwitz concentration camps. The focus of the movie is the family that lives in a palatial home just outside of the concentration camp. The dad works there, they have three kids and the mom is an at home parent. They have servants and visitors that come and go all times of the day. I know it may not sound scary yet, but all the while the family that we are focused on, who live in the house, we can hear what is going on inside of the concentration camp. There are screams, gunshots, pleas of help and we can see smoke pouring out of a furnace. What makes it even more frightening, we never see any of the atrocities, thank goodness. We can only hear the awful, awful things that happened at one of these camps. It is horrifying. The screams are blood curdling. The movie is in German with English subtitles, and when you hear the screaming, it just says "audible screaming" on the subtitles. That gave me chills while watching. When they go away from the screams of terror, we focus on the family and their inner workings. These people are pure evil. The dad is a shrill businessman who takes advantage of every person he comes in contact with. He may seem like just a working stiff, but when you think about it and watch his actions, he is a monster. The mother is a witch. She is constantly screaming at the servants. She is mad at her mom when she leaves. The mom leaves because she cannot sleep with all the sounds going on outside her bedroom window by the way. She treats her dog like garbage. She calls herself the "Queen of Auschwitz". She is just as evil as her spouse. The kids are doing what they see from their parents. The teenage son is mean and hurtful. He locks his little brother in a greenhouse at one point, and has this creepy smile on his face the whole time. The little boy will stop and listen to the horror outside his bedroom window while he plays with toys during the day. It is a nightmare. The baby is just a baby, so who knows how she grew up.

There are two things in this movie that may stay with me forever, and they both occur near the end of the movie. Spoiler alert. The husband gets a new job and has to move out. The family stays at their home while the husband continues to climb the ranks for these incredibly brutal and offensive people. At one point he gets an award and something named after him. When he calls his wife to brag, she asks how the party he is attending was. He tells her he wasn't really paying attention, but thinking about "how much gas it would take to get rid of all the people in the room". That is evil incarnate. Then, as he is leaving said party to return home, he stops in two seperate hallways and tries to vomit. Meanwhile we get a flash forward to an Auschwitz museum and you see the horrors that occurred. There are a massive number of shoes, clothes and various sizes of all, saying that no one was spared by these monsters. They show an oven that was used. They show pictures of people who lost their lives simply for having a different religion. It is truly the scariest moment of the whole movie for me. We then go back to the evil monster from the whole movie, unable to vomit, and then it is credits. It is almost like the guy realized what he was doing, and how bad it was, and he almost had a moment of clarity. Almost.

"Zone of Interest" is a movie that needs to be seen, but only once. This was a tough watch, but it also gave me a look at the day to day lives of these monsters and how truly sickening they were to be doing the things they did. I will never watch this movie again, but it was one that needed to be watched. It is a good way to learn some unfortunate history. Watch it if you are interested in the horrifying history of these evil monsters. "Zone of Interest" told a good story of how villainous real people can be, if they choose to be villains. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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