Ďáblova svatyně - 1. sezóna (2019)

Helena Brant is hiding from life due to past trauma, a defensive introvert working night shift in a call-centre. She gets a message from her estranged outgoing and wayward twin sister Siri begging her to visit her in a private clinic in the Alps. Himmelstal seems to be an exclusive residential sanatorium set in a secluded village in an inaccessible valley high in the Alps: clean air, vertiginous peaks, green meadows - if you like your slice of heaven with an alpine flavour, Himmelstal is it.Siri has apparently been admitted as part of a parole deal following a car accident/DUI, and cannot leave until the doctors sign off on her freedom from addiction. The reunion goes well enough until Helena wakes up to discover Siri has switched places with her and escaped. When she tries to explain this to the authorities, they don’t believe her. They think she’s Siri, being characteristically deceitful and manipulative. That a ‘patient’ might escape Himmelstal is, for them, unthinkable.Hel discovers why this is so: the “clinic” is in fact a prison, a clandestine, globally funded research facility for the study of high achieving and incurable psychopaths. Hel is now trapped in a waking nightmare in which no-one is who they seem to be. Everyone believes she is Siri. All the ‘villagers” are either dangerous, psychopaths or undercover researchers from the clinic.Surrounded by the most predatory and manipulative people imaginable, locked in a world where trust is a weakness and friendship can be fatal, escape is only the second order of business: Hel’s first problem is simply survival. To remain alive in Himmelstal the initially reserved Hel has to become bold, exploitative, unrestrained and defiant of authority – all the significant qualities that define psychopathy itself. The hunted will become the hunter, the sheep a lion - and as anyone who has studied lions will tell you, when it comes to hunting, the female is always deadlier than the male…