Mad Heidi

This is a slightly edited review of the one first published after Mad Heidi was screened at FrightFest Halloween 2022.

Switzerland on the outside appears to be fairly tranquil country with a good standard of living, proudly independent of its status within Europe and the world.

There are darker elements that occasionally break through the veneer such as opaque banking practices and insularity. And it’s this that directors Sandro Klopfstein and Johannnes Hartmann (cowritten with Gregory D. Widmer) of Mad Heidi dig at beneath the absurdity of a cheese fixated dictatorship of President Meili (Casper Van Dien).

Heidi (Alice Lucy) is living in some bliss with her grandfather Alpöhi (David Schofield) until a series of circumstances force her to take up arms and set about a clash with Meili. It’s from here that the filmmakers decide to bludgeon the Swiss state to their attitude to race, immigration through the national stereotypes of cheese, cuckoo clocks and alpine horns.

Subtle satire this isn’t as the filmmakers take aim at Swiss life and outlooks, getting whatever points it wants to with hammer blows. All the while raiding sleazy world cinema with references to far-east mountain retreat training regimes, nuns, women in prison, so on and so forth.

Whether the people of Switzerland will watch Mad Heidi and wonder ‘do the people of the world really see us like this’, and be embarrassed, is very unlikely. And in the end, that’s not the point of something as over the top and ludicrous as this.

Made through crowd funding, the writers and directors are obviously venting here and what this primarily is about is just good fun with gross action sequences and generally going over the top on almost every level and at every stage of the film. That can be quite wearing at times as it thrashes from one madness to another but as none of it outstays its welcome the filmmakers just about gets away with it.

Mad Heidi will be available on digital platforms from 20 March 2023.