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DANISH GOTHIC

Today's film was the Danish thriller by Henrik Ruben Genz

Frygtelig lykkelig / Terribly Happy (2008)

A cop gets assigned to the hinterlands as a punishment? A chance to start over? Both.

He lands in an ingrown toenail of a place where everyone is in on something but it will be the (handsome) young cop's business to figure it out. And ours.

There are mysterious goings on. A disappearance. A beaten wife. A town bully. Intimations of the mysterious bogs nearby where cars, cows and people can disappear without a trace.

There is a town bully, the wife beater. He has everyone buttoned up. Secrets.

Funny, the bully is not ugly but rather good looking as well. But mean. And you can see the menace.

Genz has this film very much in control. We learn stuff as our cop does, usually too late.

But there are twists and turns.

I said gothic. Well, also noir. And, for that matter a western theme that is familiar. Newcomer to a town in fear of the villain and before he knows it he is enmeshed in the evil that pervades.

Maybe this is a psychological thriller.

Why am I intent on classifying it?

Because Genz wrestles with the genrés, mashes them all together and comes out with a neat little piece that would be right at home on the old Rod Serling show Twilight Zone

I liked this a lot. There were points, incidentally, when I did not like it. I wanted to bail out because this film made me so uncomfortable. One of the things it does is to change perceptions of people you either detest or become attached to in the progress of the story. In other words, it is a mindfuck.

I will give it a 4 out of Netflix5.

PS: This is no christmas movie. But it was the perfect antidote to any lingering sentimentality.

Labels: films