Stereo (2014)

After retreating to a rural idyll, Erik opens a motorcycle repair shop. He spends his free time with his girlfriend Julia and her young daughter Linda. At first, everything seems to be going great, but one day a mysterious stranger named Henry appears in this seemingly perfect world and, like a parasite, refuses to be shaken off. He provokes Erik and, with his cynical manner, drives him to the brink of despair. For now, though, Erik is alone with this problem, because only he can see and hear the mysterious stranger. Things do not improve for Erik when Gaspar and his entourage show up and force him to get involved in illegal dealings against another crime boss named Keitel. Feeling heavily cornered, he must decide whether to trust Henry and accept his help or fight the extortionists alone. In the end, Erik refuses to cooperate. During a visit to a psychiatric clinic, Erik is given the address of a healer, whom he visits immediately afterward in a run-down high-rise housing estate. The healer tries to treat Erik with hypnosis and acupuncture. However, in the highly emotional and charged situation, Henry manages to make Erik stop the treatment. At a meeting with Keitel’s intermediaries, Gaspar betrays Erik—because of his unwillingness to cooperate—by revealing his whereabouts and other details, in exchange for being removed from Keitel’s hit list. The two intermediaries pretend to agree, but after the betrayal they intend to kill Gaspar on Keitel’s written orders. At that moment, the door to the room where the meeting is taking place opens. However, we do not learn what happens next. Gaspar visits Erik again with his entourage to reconfirm the details of the plan they discussed against Keitel. Erik apparently knows nothing about any such agreement. Gaspar cannot understand Erik’s behavior and shows him the bodies of Keitel’s intermediaries in the van he brought. He claims that Erik is Thomas “Zille” Zilewski and that he killed the two men. He blackmails him, threatening that Keitel will kill Linda, Julia, and her father Wolfgang if Zilewski does not cooperate as agreed. Erik decides to go along with it, especially since he is only supposed to be present as a diversion at Keitel’s club. Erik returns to the healer in desperation. Henry insists that he is a part of Erik. This time, she treats him intensively with acupuncture. During the treatment, Erik’s character temporarily shifts into Henry’s cynicism. At the same time, Julia, Linda, and Wolfgang are abducted from Julia’s house. At the end of the treatment, one needle remains in Erik’s neck. An old man in a wheelchair, who is in the healer’s apartment, explains to Erik in a Russian accent that during the treatment he revealed his true character, and that it is Erik—not Henry—who has the brain disease. The remaining needle is now blocking his true character. Erik can remove it at any time to change into his true self for good and irrevocably. Erik is afraid to do so and leaves the needle in place. When Erik enters the gloomy underworld club, Keitel’s men recognize him through the surveillance cameras. Henry convinces him that it would be better to disappear, but it is too late. Erik’s attempted escape ends in the men’s restroom. Keitel, who has difficulty walking and does not know about Erik’s brain disease, suspects a trap and calls for backup. He sends a thug to Erik to assess the situation. The abductees are brought to Keitel. He forces Linda to reveal that Erik is not her father, then has her taken away. The desperate Julia and her father remain with Keitel. When Wolfgang explains that he is a police officer, he is knocked down. Erik is beaten bloody in the restroom. Lying on the floor, Erik begs Henry for help. But Henry makes it a condition that Erik admit his new life is a lie. After hesitating briefly, Erik gives in and pulls the remaining acupuncture needle from his neck. In a flashback, it is revealed that Erik really is the cynical criminal Zille. He warns Henry, who was in fact his honorable brother, that he and his wife must flee with Zille because Zille has crossed Keitel. Keitel’s men then break into the house and kill Henry and his wife, while Zille manages to escape. Zille gets up and beats his armed tormentor to death in the restroom. Using the man’s walkie-talkie, Zille tells Keitel that he is coming to see him now. Gaspar’s crew, which had infiltrated Keitel’s men, engages them in a firefight and gains the upper hand. In the showdown in Keitel’s office, Keitel, with Julia as a human shield, faces Zille, Gaspar, and Hansen in a Mexican standoff. Zille denies that he loves Julia to convince Keitel that Keitel has nothing on him, lays down his weapon, and proposes a deal: Gaspar, Hansen, and Zille will take over Keitel’s business, while Keitel retires. Keitel sees through the ruse, and a shootout breaks out, in which everyone except Julia, Wolfgang, and Zille is killed. Zille, however, is badly wounded, but manages to reach the club’s exit with Linda, Julia, and Wolfgang. Zille collapses alone inside the club as the others flee and the exit door slams shut. Henry appears to him one last time, now as his brother, and smokes one last cigarette with him. Julia pulls open the club door from the outside, drags Zille out, and rides away with him on his motorcycle. We see Zille once more, injured and grinning as he leans against a wall, leaving the ending open to two interpretations.