Picture Palace | Film  Ice-Cold Hell

A dead body is found in the Alps, right on the border between Germany and Austria. Investigators from both countries work together to solve the murder – against their will. Cyrill Boss and Philipp Stennert present an outstanding work of Alpine noir with unexpected twists and turns and unique characters.

A series about two cops hunting serial killers on the border of Germany and Austria: this is prestige TV? The premise alone might evoke the dregs of basic cable. But the award-winning German-Austrian streaming hit Der Pass (Pagan Peak) (three seasons, 2019–2023) is a crime thriller so well made it snowplows past any doubts or preconceptions the viewer might have.

Ambition Meets Resentment

Establishing a mood of captivating gloom from the start, Season 1 opens with German officer Ellie Stocker (Julia Jentsch) puzzling over a murder victim staged in a ritual pose precisely on the border. Ellie is friendly and competent. The air of soulful empathy serves her well here: Ellie comes across as the ideal colleague and team player. But this is a setup of sorts on the show’s part, for Ellie has no idea of the darkness that awaits as she agrees to lead the murder investigation. It’s a tribute to Jentsch’s acting that Ellie appears to age 10 years by the end of Season 1, at which point the eager up-and-comer we first met bears little relation to the woman Ellie has become.

Ellie’s partner is Gedeon Winter (Nicholas Ofczarek, in an iconic performance), a corrupt disgruntled police detective demoted from Vienna to the boondocks of Salzburg, where he has gone to seed in a dreary café. Winter swaddles his bulk in a fur-lined coat that gives him the air of a ruined pimp, making for the perfect odd-couple pairing with go-getter Ellie. As interesting as the role reversal that transpires between the two leads as the series progresses is the brother-sister dynamic they gradually form.

NO WINTER WONDERLAND

The first two seasons of Pagan Peak specialize in the kind of nerve-wracking suspense that tempts a viewer to make unwise decisions as one episode ends and the clock ticks toward midnight. Season 1 alternates between Berchtesgaden and Salzburg, with detours to Munich and Graz, in the run-up to Christmas. But the atmosphere is less cozy vacation spot than winter holiday from hell, thanks to a marauding “Krampus Killer,” an incel and doomsday prepper who appropriates the traditional Krampus figure (a kind of local alter ego to St. Nicholas meant to scare naughty children) to wreak a terrible revenge on the society that has failed to recognize his genius. The showrunners wring so much creepy imagery from hand-carved Krampus masks that it’s as if the Krampus legend waited hundreds of years for these filmmakers to come along and realize its full spooky potential.

Small Victories Against Evil

Pagan Peak is no traditional whodunnit: Season 1 reveals who the killer is in the third episode. The writers pointedly situate his wounded male vanity in the tech industry, and the killer hides his ego behind a façade of almost aggressive blandness, which suggests that Boss and Stennert recognize that in the post #MeToo era, even crime fiction should be leery of creating charismatic male monsters.

Similarly, in Season 2 the viewer can surmise who the killer will be from the opening minutes. The evil resides in a social elite that flatters itself with trappings of aristocracy. Ellie and Winter’s investigation leads them to two brothers, one a loser turned full-blown sicko, the other a successful magnate who turns instinctively ruthless when he has to protect his privilege.

In both seasons, Ellie and Winter suffer punishing setbacks in their investigations. The bad guys are always way ahead of the authorities, in a way that resonates with how real-world civic institutions feel overmatched by bad actors in the 21st century.

Ellie and Gedeon eventually eke out only the most provisional of victories, at great cost to their well-being, and only by sacrificing their professional ethics. Pagan Peak withholds any neat resolution of dedicated crimefighters handily triumphing over evildoers. This denies the audience satisfaction on one level, yet Seasons 1 and 2 are remarkably credible to the bitter end.

Servus, Ellie and Gedeon

Perhaps daunted by having to top themselves, co-creators Boss and Stennert handed the writing and directing reins to a new team for Season 3. Or perhaps they sensed that a third season would be the proverbial one trip to the well too many, which arguably proved to be the case. But the last episode gives Ellie and Winter a grace note to exit on, and the welcome news is that the story doesn’t end there, in a sense: the “Erfolgsduo” of Julia Jentsch and Nicholas Ofczarek are reuniting for the upcoming Prime Video series Drunter und Drüber. Best of all, it’s a comedy, which should give the actors some new notes to play, since comic timing is not exactly a hallmark of Der Pass. Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that Boss and Stennert have moved on to the big screen with 2024’s Hagen, because Pagan Peak makes their cinematic ambitions clear to see.

Notable also for fans of the series – the VR game PAGAN PEAK VR, an escape room game loosely based on the series.
 

March 2025