Too long

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2019)

There are clear pararelels with "The Wicker Man" here but this film goes way overboard with the sex and gore apparently inherent in a fictional Swedish pagan cult. Some scenes linger for far too long and the film is teppered with moments of humour that just seem out of place. The transition from studious onlookers to victims by the invited foreign "guests" is not really smooth or even believable. After witnessing two suicides (one actually more akin to murder) one can't quite believe that all the "guests" wouldn't simply have run away. The film does deserve some artistic merit with its set designs and the performances of the background cast, and the location is well chosen, but the screenplay lacks quality and the direction is nothing more than average. The film too heavily relies on a huge shock factor to instill audience attention rather than building on genuine atmosphere and suspense (the latter of which quite frankly it has none). The relationship between the two main characters, Christian and Dina, is at best not fully explored, and at worst superficial with Christian labeled as untrustworthy from the start, but even by close we still don't really know who he is. On the plus side Florence Pugh puts in an excellent performance as Dani. Its a film that will split audiences and even if, like me, you are underwhelmed, I found it one of the oddest and strangest films I think I've ever seen. Judge for yourself.