If the German Expressionists back in the 1920s had industrial music, fast food, William S. Burroughs and conspiracy theories about government plots to keep the public docile, they might have made Decoder.
Or maybe not as this also stands as a portrait of a place and a time, the urban underworld of Germany in the early 80s. Its sex clubs, bleak streets, small apartments and foreboding offices are all shot with a strange and vivid low-budget beauty.
After a murky first forty-five minutes that has you unsure if any of this is even set on planet Earth, a theme emerges: music as terrorism. Actually, mere sound as terrorism. It’s the perfect subject for a film entrenched in the Euro underground music scene of the day (F.M. Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten has the lead role, with a small part played by Genesis P-Orridge). The bigwigs use subliminal signals programmed into public Muzak to keep the people stupid. Meanwhile, a blank-eyed young ticking time-bomb with recording equipment, a job in a popular burger joint and a preference for punishing beats sneaks in his own “music” (partly made up of the distorted bleat of a screaming frog) which is similarly programmed with secret sound waves, except that his work makes people go crazy. The result: Germany becomes Riot City. In the world of this film, that means that the good guys win.
This is slow and slimy, an art film from the gutter. If you hate it, you get the feeling that the makers would be happy about that.