Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Plagues of Breslau’ on Netflix, a Gory Serial-Killer Thriller from Poland

The Plagues of Breslau (or Plagi Breslau) is a Polish thriller from 2018, now on Netflix and ready to bring oodles and wads of gooey viscera right into your homes. Hooray! This serial-killer saga from director Patryk Vega may have gore mavens lining up to soak in all the guts ‘n’ plasma, but will it appeal to those of us with porcelain sensibilities?

THE PLAGUES OF BRESLAU: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Helena Rus (Maglorzata Kozuchowska) sits in her car, an anguished expression on her face. A group of toughs approaches, crudely propositions a sexual assault, sees the pistol in her hand and turn tail, not so tough after all. What’s her damage? We don’t know yet. Suddenly, she’s called to a crime scene. She’s a homicide detective. An unknown perpetrator has wrapped a man’s body in bull’s hide, sewn it shut with fishline and left it in the outdoor market. The pathologist (Iwona Bielska) says the guy was still alive when he was sewn in there, and he not only suffocated, but baked to death as the hide shrunk in the sun, crushing him. The local D.A. (Andrzej Grabowski) nearly tosses his cookies as she performs the autopsy, and we understand his wooziness all too well since the movie shows all the scalpel cuts and brains in the sawed-open skull, all very gross-like, no bones about it, save for actual bones.

The next day, another victim turns up, in a manner I won’t describe, partly so I won’t spoil the movie, partly because I don’t want to relive the moment in all its retch-inducing disgustingness. CSI: Wroclaw needs some federal assistance, so Iwona Bogacka (Daria Widawska) arrives to step on Helena’s toes. Iwona is so mercilessly competent, and so mercilessly dressed in sloppy old sweatpants, she wins over Helena, and turns out to be an expert on coma patients, as Helena’s cop partner is one, due to an incident with a horse, and don’t ask why the horse, because I already said I’d rather not revisit the scene, thank you.

Iwona looks at the words branded on the bodies — DEGENERATE, CORRUPT, etc. — and susses out a motive. Obviously, she says, the killer is inspired by the Week of Plagues, an awful thing that happened in the past, where bad people were punished for their sins. OBVIOUSLY. And the murders are happening at 6 p.m. every night; you can totally set your watch to it so you know to maybe not eat first. Iwona knows her shit, and takes even less shit, complementing Helena’s blunt, no-nonsense demeanor with an even blunter and more nonsense-free demeanor. Can the two of them crack this doozy of a serial-killer case and retain the contents of their stomachs? I spew no spoilers!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Seven, Seven, Seven, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Seven.

Performance Worth Watching: You’ll like the intensity of Kozuchowska’s performance, which grounds the film in her raw emotions. And she really leans into her uber-extreme asymmetrical haircut, which would make Lisbeth Salander fire her stylist.

Memorable Dialogue: “Sounds like you’re dealing with a whack-job,” the pathologist says with grim understatement as she gets out the bonesaw.

Sex and Skin: Plenty of graphic nudity on the autopsy table!

Our Take: The Plagues of Breslau is gritty pulp, or maybe pulpy grit, that clips along expeditiously, delivering gore at regular intervals. Most movies are fine with a quick crotch shot of a scarred, dismembered, swollen he-corpse on the postmortem slab, but this one needs six or eight lengthy lingerings on the yuck, for some reason — possibly because principal photography was rushed due to the budget being blown on ooey-gooey bloody makeup effects and props, which are admittedly effective? I can only hypothesize. And maybe I don’t consume enough streaming B-movies (note: I think I watch plenty), but this amount of blech seems excessive to those of us who aren’t autopsy fetishists.

The movie isn’t at all original — who wants to get out the microscope and parse the differences between the six “plagues” and the seven deadly sins? — but it’s reasonably intriguing thanks to the little deviations in formula Vega and co-writer Sylwia Koperska-Mrozinska devise. Plagues is a thriller that reveals too much too early and is all the better for it, because it shows a willingness to push the story into relatively uncharted territory in the third act. That said, this one gets ludicrous and sloppy down the stretch, and I wouldn’t buy that ending at bargain-basement prices. But I at least gave enough of a crap to keep watching and see how this rubbishy thriller resolved itself.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Plagues of Breslau offers enough intrigue to render it worth a watch. Barf-baggers should avoid it like one of the other plagues.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Plagues of Breslau on Netflix