- Directed by Thordur Palsson
- Written by Jamie Hannigan, Thordur Palsson
- Stars Odessa Young, Joe Cole, Siobhan Finneran
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NoSOFB2Ryg
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was literally a chilling movie to watch, very cold and desolate. The location and vibe of it were perfect, giving a real sense of them being trapped and isolated. It was solidly good throughout, and then the ending is questionable. The more we thought about it and discussed it, the more we liked it. We both give it a thumbs up.
Spoilery Synopsis
We see various shots of the very cold land as the credits roll. Eventually, we cut to Eva walking through the snow. “Magnus said it was a place of opportunity if you can endure the cold and long nights.” Now, the small fishing town is starving, and it’s not looking good.
Ragnar is the leader of the community, and Eva points out that there have been bad years before, but men always ended up dying in those years. The roads are all buried, so no one’s going anywhere until spring. After dinner, Helga tells the men a story about two brothers who murdered each other.
Eva and Magnus owned the fishing station, and when he died, she was left in charge. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, and neither do most of the fishermen.
In the morning, Eva and Helga watch the men take their boats to the beach. They all see a big sailing ship out on the horizon. It’s stuck on the rocks and sinking pretty fast, and it’s too far away for the fisherman to get there in time to help. Even if they did save some, they don’t have the food to spare for more mouths. It’s the same place they lost Magnus last year. It’s Eva’s call as to whether to try to save the men, and she tells the men to go home and take the day off.
Eva finds a barrel of food on the beach that probably came from the wrecked ship. They take a boat to the crash site to search for more barrels. They find survivors, too many for their boat, and they back off, letting the men in the water drown. They end up fighting off some of the men, and Ragnar is lost in the fight.
The following morning, bodies start washing up on shore. Even the fishermen puke when Daniel cuts one of the dead open and eels pour out. Helga is superstitious and demands that the men wrap the coffins in rope and do some other rituals to keep the dead from coming back.
As night falls, Eva gets a scare outside in the dark and tells Daniel, the new helmsman, what she saw. He says maybe it’s time to get their rifle out. He shows her how to use it, and the two start to get close.
Helga puts up a talisman above the door. “The Draugr needs to see it” to stay away. She describes a creature that’s essentially a zombie powered by hate. Helga tells Eva all about the creature, who visits her dreams. Helga says it’s too strong, and soon, it’ll get in. “It won’t stop until it takes all of us. The only way to stop a Draugr is fire– burn it!”
The men finally get a good catch, so they’re all going to eat well tonight.in the morning, all the fish are gone, even the bait. The men argue and turn against each other with accusations. Helga is missing; was she behind the food disappearing?
They check out the coffins, and one of the dead men is missing. Eva orders that the coffins be tied up as Helga warned.
That night, Eva sees a dead man in her room, but he vanishes quickly. Hakon, the man who sealed up the coffins earlier today, becomes very ill and loses his mind. “It says we’re all gonna die.” Hakon then tries to kill Daniel until someone whacks him in the head with a hammer. Eva is convinced the Draugr is real; Daniel says, “The living are always more dangerous than the dead.”
Jonas wants to take the day off and build a giant cross on the mountain for protection. There’s an accident, and they carry in Daniel, badly scraped up and crazy like Hakon was. He was running from “a shadow.” Daniel kills Jonas and menaces Eva before cutting his own throat.
Ony Eva, Skuli, Aron, and one other man are left alive. They discuss taking the boat to the nearest town, but what’s to keep the monster from following them? Eva wants to destroy it with fire. Its trail leads near the graves, so they head there.
Eva loses the others in the fog. She watches as Skuli walks over the edge of a cliff. Eva sees a dark shape standing over the body, and she gets out the rifle. No- it’s just Helga, who froze to death in that spot.
Back at the camp, Eva tells the two remaining men to get a boat ready; they’ll just have to take their chances. Eva runs into the monster in her room, and she shoots it. Then she pours oil over it while it’s still struggling and sets it on fire. She runs to her two men and tells them that it’s over, she burned it.
As they watch the building engulfed in flame, we get a flashback to a few minutes earlier, when the lone surviving man from the shipwreck begs Eva not to kill him and apologizes for taking some of their food. She can’t understand his language and shoots him before burning him alive. Or was that just the creature messing with her head as it dies?
Brian’s Commentary
The location here is amazing; cold, creepy, and begging for a haunting. Who would ever try to build a village there? That place is bleak. They never mention the year that it takes place, but it’s 1871.
Initial thoughts:
The ending killed it for me. The explanation didn’t match what we saw earlier. That man wouldn’t have taken the entire catch of the day. He didn’t make the men sick, and he certainly didn’t take the dead man out of the coffin. This was really good up until the last two minutes. I did not like the ending at all.
After a few minutes thinking about it, I added this part:
Except maybe what we saw at the end was simply Eva’s mind trying to explain it all away. There really was a monster, and she did kill it, but part of the magic was that people would reason it away. If anything hinting at this was mentioned during the film, I may have missed it, but that makes the ending, even the “twist” more satisfying.
I will revise it to say I liked it a lot, although I’m sure many will hate the ending.
Kevin’s Commentary
So, at the very end, as the creature was dying, it did one last act of evil by messing with Eva’s mind. I’m going with that too. It does make the whole thing better, which had been really great up to that point. The cast was excellent, the setting and situation is creepy, and overall I liked it quite a bit.