Premiering in 2015 at the South X Southwest  festival The Corpse of Anna Fritz  is a Spanish Language thriller/horror film about  morgue attendant Pau (Albert Carbo) who finds himself alone with the body of a young and extremely popular actor Anna Fritz (Alba Ribas.) Pau texts photos of Anna’s corpse to his friends Ivan (Cristian Valencia) and Javi (Bernat Saumell) who join Pau in the morgue to ogle the actor’s corpse. Being men of low character and with their inhibitions eradicated by cocaine the word of the day becomes necrophilia. A bad and immoral idea turns disastrous when Anna awakens from her unexplained comatose state and the three young men are faced with the serious criminal charges but lack the moral fortitude to do anything approaching what is right.

Anna Fritz is a horror film that presents no supernatural elements existing in the continuum of thriller and thrillers turns on their characters and their acting. This film does an admirable job at both of these factors. The young men with their limited intellect and obsession with partying are sadly not outside of the bounds of reality and their divergent reactions to Anna’s living state drive the dramatic conflict at the heart of their relationship. Alba Ribas as Anna is phenomenal, her character at times is paralyzed leaving the actor with only her eyes to express her terror and shock and she is terrific at it. The most empathetic character in the small film Alba’s Anna is the emotional heart that beats the movie’s lifeblood of tension.

With a brief running time of just 74 minutes Anna Fritz  does not overstay it welcome, moving directly into the tense plot and telling its story with economy.  Currently streaming on Shudder  Anna Fritz  is not a film to everyone’s tastes but it successfully captures the terror, tension and idiocy of its character without devolving, despite prominent nudity, into titillation with the real horror always centered in Anna’s experiences.