New to Netflix is the German horror-thriller The Privilege (originally titled Das Privileg). Leading the cast is Dark's Max Schimmelpfennig as a young man named Finn who witnessed the death of his older sister when he was just a boy.
Now, as a teenager attending an elite and mysterious private school, supernatural events begin to haunt him and his friends. It's up to Finn to figure out what is plaguing their community.
As we delve into exactly what is in those pills, and who is behind the creepy happenings, we're going to hit some spoilers, so be forewarned.
The film opens with Finn as a young boy being reluctantly babysat by his older sister Anna while his parents take their other sister Sophie out to an event. Finn hears strange growling noises and goes to Anna's room to find her wielding a knife, bleeding from the mouth and claiming something is after them.
She grabs Finn and they get into the car but come to a stop on a bridge where Anna insists the only way to stop the 'thing' from hunting them is to jump – which she does and tries to pull Finn with her by his ankle. Not wanting to die, Finn kicks her to let go and she falls to her death.
As a teenager, Finn, who attends regular psychiatric appointments, is a shy and slightly awkward student but not without friends, in particular his best friend Lena (Lea van Acken). The two head to a party hosted by a popular boy named Leander, who is dating Samira – the girl Finn has a crush on, who also happens to be his psychiatrist's daughter.
At the party, Finn takes a drug that makes him hallucinate that everyone is covered in blood and that Lena is hooking up with Samira. After the party, Finn visits his dying former-pastor grandfather in the hospital, asking him if he believes in the supernatural, which his grandfather says yes he does after having 'healed' a young boy via an exorcism.
Later, Finn wakes in the middle of the night to find his sister surrounded by his parents and a few other strangers, all in green robes. They are in the middle of a ceremony in which an elderly woman strips nude and approaches Sophie while Finn's father says that Sophie's body is there for her.
Finn grabs an axe, creeping around the side of the house when he hears the growling noises and then is knocked unconscious. When he comes to, he is surrounded by his parents and his doctor, who claim that he fell while he was sleepwalking.
The next morning Finn wakes to hear the same noises in Sophie's room, so he enters and sees through the frosted glass of her closet door Sophie bleeding from the mouth, the growling intensifying, only for Sophie to pull the door open, appearing normal. She goes to school despite feeling unwell and Finn witnesses her dump her boyfriend in front of everyone.
Later during gym class, she falls off of the high rope and is bleeding from the mouth in the same way Anna bled. Suspecting something is amiss, her ex-boyfriend comes to the home but is turned away, so he texts Finn and asks to meet at a diner.
At the diner, the ex is lured out by the sound of Sophie's voice only to be attacked by the same monster who is disguised as a middle-aged woman seen earlier, only her eyes are milky white betraying her possession. By the time Finn arrives he's already been murdered. The police arrive and claim the death was suicide, but Finn tries to tell the detective that he knows his friend was killed.
Finn realises that the drugs he's been taking, prescribed by his psychiatrist, are weird – so he opens one up to discover a parasitical worm inside the capsule, which he brings to his science teacher. She says the worm is rare and only grows on dead bodies, but for more information she suggests he and Lena visit an expert named Eliska.
Eliska takes Finn's hands and they have a shared vision in which Eliska can see the death of Anna. She tells him that the pill is very dangerous and they have to do a ceremony of some sort to exorcise the demon from Sophie before she suffers the same fate as Anna.
After a call from his father, Finn rushes to the hospital to see his grandfather off for his surgery, but upon wandering into the restricted area he sees his grandfather on the operating table with a swarm of black insects flying out of the incision in his abdomen. Finn panics and bangs on the glass, thinking he's shattered it, when a nurse enters and shoos him away, the glass unbroken and his hand uncut.
The doctor says the surgery went well and asks Finn to get his parents to come to visit, so Finn goes home and finds Samira there, having previously asked Finn to come study with her only for him to stand her up, as he was at the hospital. Finn's parents leave, only for Lena, Eliska and her son to arrive to begin the seance which Samira stays for, too.
During the seance, the demon appears and attacks Eliska, but before they can rid it from the house, Finn's parents come home and turn on the lights to reveal Eliska's face covered in gashes from the creature. She and her son flee; Lena, Samira and Finn run off soon after.
Thinking it might be the end of the world, Samira, Lena, and Finn have a threesome. The next morning they go to look for Elena but the landlord says that she and her son fled in the night 'like they were being chased by the devil' and with nothing else to do, they head to school to keep a low profile.
However, while there Finn sees Leander coughing up the same goo from the parasitical worm in the drugs before Leander stabs himself through the top of his mouth, and then falls from the roof of the school. The paramedics rush him to the hospital but in the ambulance, the EMTs remove a strange fungus-looking thing from his throat.
As he's heading into surgery he tells Finn and Samira to 'look in the folder' which they do, only to discover they've all been either adopted, fostered, or straight-up sold to their current 'families'. Suddenly, Leander's father appears to say Leander is dead, and then he confirms to Finn that his parents aren't his biological family, but that Finn's father was adopted, too, and was 'saved' by the grandfather.
Meanwhile, Lena gets into a presentation by the pharmaceutical company, headed up by Finn's father, making the drugs that Finn and some of their classmates have been taking. She sneaks into a basement room where she finds several corpses growing the fungus, including Eliska.
Finn and Samira try to escape but witness Finn's grandfather's sudden death before being kidnapped and when they wake in Finn's house they have been restrained by Samira's mother. She takes Finn through a secret doorway in the wall and brings him to a basement where his parents, sister and others are there in their green robes.
The father reveals that Finn is to serve the special purpose of giving up his body so his grandfather's soul can inhabit it. Understandably, Finn freaks out; he's strapped to a table, his mouth held open and his tongue cut.
The grandfather, not dead, climbs on top of Finn and opens his mouth as the same swarm of black insects comes out and infiltrates Finn. However, Lena, now on the scene, has freed Samira and come to the secret room to find the cult members in a trance.
She douses them in gasoline and sets them on fire, then frees Finn. They run outside to find Samira in the car; as they get in they see Sophia, half-burned, speaking in a distorted voice asking Finn not to let her die like Anna, but Finn tells Samira to drive so she runs Sophie over.
As they drive over the bridge, the demonic creature seems to vaporise itself through the car's air conditioner causing Samira to crash into the guard rail where Anna had jumped. Finn and Lena escape and as the car begins to fall Finn manages the pull Samira free.
They resolve to go somewhere they won't know anyone, and as a billboard for the pharmaceutical company and their miracle drug looms overhead, Finn observes that they can't trust anyone. As they walk, Samira pauses and looks over her shoulder, her eyes have gone milky white, revealing she has been possessed by the demonic creature.
The Privilege is now available to watch on Netflix.
