A Christmas horror is always welcome for me, especially if it has any sort of heart to it and doesn’t just use Christmas as a setting for horror tomfoolery to play out. We get some real connections in this Norwegian Christmas horror satire. The film is like if Gremlins were only playing by the Home Alone rules, protecting their own by any means necessary. There are some violent kills in this, but nothing completely gruesome, often cutting away before any actual violence happens. The snowy setting and “fish out of water” cast is so endearing that its hard not to root for them. Although, that doesn’t mean you are against the Barn Elves either, I was instead wishing for peace and serenity, maybe even a cohabitation situation.
Bill (Martin Starr) and his family inherit a remote farm in Norway, leaving their American lives behind, they pack up and move to embrace a new way of life, with plans to convert the old barn on the property to an AirBnB spot. We are straight away thrust into the tone of the film, which is very satirical against the American family, painting them as naive and culturally obsessed. They arrive with matching bobble hats with knitted “NORWAY” written across their foreheads and have a keen fascination with the Norwegian food.
Lucas (Townes Bunner) is exploring the town when he meets Tor Åge (Calle Hellevang Larsen), who runs a local museum on Barn Elves, and conveniently lays out the Barn Elf rules for Lucas, which may or may not come in handy later on. Lucas has heard some sounds in the barn before, but after hearing the rules, he goes back in to investigate the noises, only to find an elf (Kiran Shah) who is living in the barn. He feeds him cookies and the Elf does jobs like digging the snow and chopping the wood.
All this domestic bliss comes crashing down when Bill and Bill’s wife, Carol (Amrita Acharia) decide to throw a housewarming party in the barn, breaking all three simple rules of the Barn Elves and unleashing havoc on the household for many nights to come.
The film sounds dumb because it very much is. It is tonally aware of what it is, like most Scandinavian films that I’ve seen. There is a distinct Nordic self awareness that hasn’t blown over to here yet. The film understands what its doing with this story, even if at times it may not deliver to the fullest of its potential. I think this is especially true in the final third of the film, where most of the Barn Elf chaos ensues. It takes a while for us to get there, and with expectations of a splat fest, I can see why people would be let down by the project. While I do think the setup was quite long, I was having a good time with the family and their dynamics in the meantime so I didn’t really notice the time go by.
The relationships between the family members are developed pretty nicely, with some tension from the intense move, Carol and Nora (Zoe Winther-Hansen) finding common ground in a step mother / daughter relationship and Lucas contending with not feeling believed or respected when asking for the family to follow the Barn Elves rules.
The horror elements are probably where the film falls the most, not delivering a lot of gore in the gory parts of the kills. It suggests them, but having that shock factor would have added a lot more to the already off the wall film. The Elves themselves are not the scariest, but their pack mentality made them seem intimidating at times and pretty relentless in their pursuit of revenge.
The location this film is shot in is so beautiful. I had so much jealousy of this terrorised family, that I was not being tortured by a Barn Elf in the freezing blankets of snow in my mansion. The hillside house and surrounding area made for some really picturesque landscape shots, and the warm lighting and eye level camera angles made for a really cosy interior of the home.
The barn itself is dingy, with cold rays beaming through the rotting planks. It’s clutter shadows the Barn Elves and is probably the most effective location for the suspense of the beginning introduction.
This might be my weirdest cry that I’ve had at a screening. Did not expect to tear up at the end of this one, but the Christmassy warmness got to me and all that beginning setup weirdly paid off for a vaguely emotional conclusion. This film is also not one I imagined I would want to put on my Christmas rewatch list but I will be hunting it down on streaming or picking it up on Apple TV to watch yearly. The Scandinavification is continuing to take me over, I am becoming a Nordic film fan only.
コメント