In the beginning there is only one voice that comes out of the old closet.

Someone is locked in, wants to get out, but cannot and begs for their freedom.

It is then the girl Sophia (Sofie Eifertinger) who unintentionally fulfills this wish.

At the noise she opens the cupboard, takes a closed glass vessel in her hand and drops it in shock when the host, the doctor Malick Roth (Ercan Durmaz), speaks to her.

But the spirit Mercurius (Holger Daemgen) rises from the shards, about whom the village has been singing songs since he was locked in this glass by Roth and his sister twenty years ago - Mercurius, with his magic, was in control of the landlord Veith's reign of terror (Matthias Redlhammer) made possible through the village.

Tilman Spreckelsen

Editor in the features section.

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And while the freed Mercurius sweeps over the houses with a sneering laugh, only to enslave the residents once more on behalf of his master, Sophia sets out into the forest where Veith lives. Accompanied by the budding herbalist Jakob (Pablo Grant), she wants to lock Mercurius back in a glass bottle.

The almost one-hour film "The Spirit in the Glass" is the only new one in the series "Six in one stroke" this year, after all the 52nd in the total count, but conspicuously alone among numerous repetitions. That's not the only sign that the series, which had three or four premieres in previous years, is running out of steam. The relationship between the nominal model - the Grimm fairy tale of the same name - and the film is so vague that you would rub your eyes if you weren't familiar with the process from earlier years: where in the fairy tale a wood chopper has his son, who has some schooling has enjoyed, takes him into the forest and first frees a genie, then brings it back with the well-known trick and finally becomes omnipotent through him,There are only trace elements of it in the fairy tale film - after all, the genie in a bottle is called Mercurius here and there, but that's about it.

The zombies stammer “Master! Master!"

Instead of being adapted, there is free association, the educational path of the wood chopper's son becomes Sophia's medical study and the starting point for discussions about what helps better against Mercurius' violence, Sophia's science or Jacob's natural magic, what Sophia, who was able to observe the work of the spirit at close range , putting senselessly skeptical words like “there is no magic” in the mouth and the like. But what should you do if you want to produce a fairy tale film on the one hand, which in the context of this series all too often means moving the decor into the foreground and not ignoring any museum village in Germany as a backdrop (here: Cloppenburg), while you at the same time does not want to appear yesterday and therefore brings the action in line with questions and ideas,who are closer to us than to the storytellers of that time.

This also applies to the humor: The funny batches are not missing in this film either, this time given by Oliver Petszokat and Citizen Lars Dietrich, which Mercurius turned into willless zombies, the ghost with angular movements and “Master!

Master! ”- Follow stammering into the forest.

In fact, there is still a lot of laughter right up to the end, mostly rascally after alleged victories over the good guys, but who, as you know, will have the upper hand in the end, which is why the whole thing becomes more and more flimsy.

As a viewer, however, you rub your eyes and ask yourself once again why you should make those “six in one go” films whose willingness to get involved in fairy tales is rather low.