A young med student by the name of "Paula Henning" (Franka Potente) is thrilled to learn that she has been accepted into the University of Heidelberg. Another female student by the name of "Gretchen" (Anna Loos) has also been accepted and becomes her roommate. While traveling from Munich to Heidelberg they encounter a young man named "David" (Arndt Schwering-Sohnrev) who has heart problems and passes out on the train. Paula administers CPR and manages to revive him. However, once they begin their anatomy course they find his body laid out for dissection. Thinking something is wrong Paula sends some blood and tissue samples to a friend for analysis. At any rate, rather than reveal the rest of the story, I'll just say that this is an exciting horror-mystery movie with good suspense and a couple of twists at the end. Although originally filmed in German, the version I saw was dubbed in English and may require some people to make allowances. Even so, I found it to be quite enjoyable. I also liked the performances of Franka Potente, Anna Loos and Sebastian Blomberg (who played the role of Paula's boyfriend, "Caspar"). As a side note, it won the "Audience Award" for "German Film of the Year" at the German Film Awards. And while that's certainly not as impressive as an Academy Award, it is a good indicator that this could be a film that fans of horror or mystery might find interesting.

There may be some slight spoilers in this review, but no worse than what you'd get from reading the plot synopsis.I'm surprised that people are comparing this to Scream and other teen slashers. The protagonists in this movie are students in medical school, not high school kids. That may be a minor distinction, but the movie is obviously targeted to a slightly older demographic than teens. For one thing, most teen slashers are rated PG-13, making them really quite limp and inhibited.At first, I thought this was going to be more "torture porn" than anything else, given the outrageous and over-the-top torture sequence early in the movie. Interestingly, it actually turned into a somewhat derivative slasher movie, despite having an interesting setup. The basic plot involves a gifted medical student discovering a secret society in her university. Long thought dead, they are composed of Machiavellian physicians who believe that sacrificing a few innocent people to advance medical research is more important than ethics. Predictably, they have some psychopaths among them who are more interested in live dissection than any kind of research.I liked the idea of this secret society, and there were some truly disturbing scenes in this movie. The whole concept of that secret society got under my skin, partly because the characters really did seem to believe that what they were doing was for the greater good. However, there were so many stupid scenes involving the characters being goofy and horny that I found the movie difficult to take seriously. As I understand it, this is mostly because I watched the dubbed version, which is supposed to truly destroy any mood or atmosphere set by the original German actors.Still, I liked it, despite the best attempts by the American voice actors to sabotage the movie. If I'd seen the original German version, with subtitles, I think I'd like it better. Still, no matter what language the characters were speaking, I think there was too much filler in the middle and not enough time spent developing the secret society.I recommend this movie to people who like conspiracy thrillers and slasher fans. However, thriller fans might be grossed out by the horror elements, and horror fans might be bored by the dramatic elements. Make sure you see the subtitled version. I've heard worse, but it's still distractingly bad.

If you're looking for a horror story with plenty of gore, fright, shock cuts, helpless young women, pursuits through dark hospital corridors, conspiracies at high levels, and an innocent student (Franka Potente) who gradually becomes aware of and finally unravels the Anti-Hippocratic plot, this is your meat. The meat may be drained of all proteins and lipids and thoroughly plasticized, but it's still meat -- of a kind.I thought it was unworthy of the writers to victimize Franka Potente's roommate at this elite medical institution in Heidelberg. Not so much because she was a flamboyantly feminine nymphomaniac but because she had an IQ of 150. At the moment, the world needs all the geniuses it can find. (On the other hand, her taste in music was execrable, so maybe it evens out.) Franka Potente is the only thing I found worth watching in the film. She's very touching as a naive who goes about discovering evil. She's relatively chaste and vulnerable. And she's not drop-dead gorgeous by Hollywood standards either, looking as she does something like Lilly Taylor, but she's a fine actress. I can say that because she shown her aptitude elsewhere, as in "Lola Rennt" and "The Bourne Identity." You can't really judge her talent from this film because her voice is horribly dubbed, along with everyone else's. It's hard to imagine why, because she speaks perfect English.I didn't bother watching the end of the film but if you like this sort of thing -- it holds no surprises whatever -- you'll probably enjoy it.

I saw Anatomy when it came out and recently bought it and the 2003 sequel and as I watch a lot of foreign films in various genres, you have to watch movies in their original language for sure. Not only is it annoying to know the voices don't belong to the actors, but they always seem cheerful, like the whole movie is one big long toothpaste commercial or something. It makes an otherwise awesome movie seem horrible and I have had to convert a lot of my friends who used to think foreign films aren't as good as North American films - that they aren't "Hollywood enough". Also, they translation is never right, it's too literal, and screws up the vibe of the movie, even if it's basically saying the same thing. I watched Anatomy by myself the other week in German then with subtitles with my roommate because he was on his laptop and didn't want to have to miss parts when he couldn't see the subtitles because he was typing. 30 mins in and he begged me to let him finish his work then start the movie over with subtitles. He loved it! Both movies are awesome as intellectual horror films! Kelly