‘Serviam – I Will Serve’ Review: The Nuns Are At It Again in a Chic, Creepy But Stifled Austrian Art-Horror

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film CriticIf Maria von Trapp found Austrian convent life a little suffocating in “The Sound of Music,” she would have been fully asphyxiated — possibly by someone else’s hand — in the austere Catholic spirit-prison that houses “Serviam – I Will Serve,” where any green hills are from view, pain is a holy priority, and perceived problematic flibbertigibbets are solved by rather more ruthless means than a jaunty sing-song.

Only the third fiction feature in 20 years from accomplished Austrian formalist Ruth Mader, this supremely well-made chiller announces itself upfront as a cut above your average nunsploitation exercise with its stark, stringent mise-en-scène and jabs of religious inquiry via surreal, Bible-based animated interludes.

Yet “Serviam’s” split impulses between conscientious Church critique and outright horror — complete with shrieking, doomy strings and twisted-sister jump scares — never coalesce into something that fully delivers on either score.

What’s left is a very handsome mood piece that is neither particularly frightening nor especially thought-provoking on matters of faith, devotion and sanctified corruption, though its expert atmospherics will carry it far on the festival circuit following initial main-competition slots in Locarno and Sarajevo.