What’s Really New Here? Seen This All Before (SPOILERS)

Best part for me was first half-hour setting up the characters. The problem is I’ve seen this movie before many times. Other than the unique summer visuals and every other character being named Lärs, what was really new here?

I foresaw almost every twist. The few I didn’t I should have (having seen Wicker Man). The movie lost me as soon as the old couple went splat. There have been actual native tribes in history that had ritualized killings of the old, but it was usually done after a party held in their honor and after they were well soused. To march them up on a high cliff above a big rock to have them willingly jump sober is just done to be cinematic and shocking, reality be damned. I knew what was coming as soon as I saw the cliff. Wait — make that as soon as the old couple sat at the head of the table. Wait — no, actually when Dani asks Lars what happens at 72 and he answers by mock cutting his throat.

I loved the duelling theses, especially by a doomed duo. And I get the main theme — that we all need family, and this is what’s needed to make Dani feel “held” to escape the blackness that took her family, even if it means sacrificing her unloving boyfriend.

I believe her smile just before credits is the first in 138 minutes.