The Sparrow in the Chimney (2024) review

Karen (Maren Eggert) is holding a birthday party for her husband Markus (Andreas Döhler) and invites her sister Jule (Britta Hammelstein) and several others to their childhood home in Switzerland to celebrate: Karen's young son Leon (Ilya Bultmann) is doing the cooking, her defiant daughter Johanna (Lea Zoë Voss) supposedly has a disability, her odd next door neighbor Liv (Luise Heyer) shows up ... but the tension in the cramped house - and all the talk regarding the fate of Karen and Jule's parents - works on Karen's nerves.  As the last part of the Zürcher brothers' trilogy, it's just as off-kilter as the first two entries, with the characters repeatedly making cruel (and sometimes factually dubious) comments to each other, there are multiple transgressive moments (Johanna pees on the floor, metal is placed in the microwave, the cat is killed in the washing machine, etc.) and Zürcher likes playing techno/electronica on the soundtrack at the most inopportune times.  The "point" of the movie, however, remains unclear: the cast acts like they're all heavily medicated and don't react to events in a human manner, Karen appears around every corner staring at her guests with the same blank expression and "reality" and "fantasy" become totally blurred.  Is it suggesting that grandma was right to leave her husband for another woman?  And grandpa was correct in losing his marbles?  Or is spending too much time with relatives enough to drive an individual to set everything on fire?  For the latter, I can only say: ohne Scheiß.