- Directed by Jonas Alexander Arnby
- Written by Rasmus Birch, Christoffer Boe, Jonas Alexander Arnby
- Stars Sonia Suhl, Lars Mikkelsen, Sonja Richter
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 24 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4geYD__tqCE
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
A sweet, romantic coming-of-age story of a young woman finding her way in a small fishing village. Well, she is coming of age and there is some romance. Also lycanthropy, plenty of drama, angst, and people being violently killed. This one is a real winner that we both liked a lot.
Synopsis
As the credits roll, we see lots of scenes of a very rainy, dreary, small town and shots of an empty house and dark beaches.
We open on Marie, a young woman at the doctor’s office. He looks at her teeth, gums, and fingernails. He doesn’t have much to say but wants to see her again next month. She goes home and takes her wheelchair-bound mother out for a roll/walk on the beach. She lives with her parents; her father seems normal, but her mother is nearly comatose and needs to be spoon-fed. Later, she takes her shirt off, and we see that she has a small red rash on her chest.
Later, Marie starts her new job at the fish processing plant. Felix and Daniel are a couple of new co-workers who seem friendly. She’s one of the few women there, certainly the most young and attractive, and the male workers notice. When she takes out the waste leftovers, one man pushes her into the watery dumpster full of fish heads, and they all gather around to applaud and laugh. When she gets out, the boss gives her her own knife. She’s been initiated. She goes home a little early and finds Dr. Larsen there talking to her father. Marie takes his package of X-Rays and notes and begins reading. He has photos of a scratched-up dead man. Later, she gets a peek of her father shaving her mother’s back.
That night, Marie has scary, animalistic dreams. Esben is the bully at work, and he picks on Marie. Daniel, on the other hand, likes her. She’s sexually assaulted with a dead fish at work by two other coworkers. That night, she finds that her rash has grown hair, and she starts to have a strange seizure before her father knocks on the door.
Marie yells that she doesn’t even know what’s wrong with her mother. She shows the rash to her father, who is speechless. She overhears her father, Thor, and Dr. Larsen discussing “not being able to keep it a secret much longer.” Larsen says that soon, Marie is likely to grow hair all over her body and become more aggressive unless she takes his medicine. She refuses to take his meds. Apparently, that’s what’s keeping her mother like she is.
Marie next goes to an old boat that she saw in one of Larsen’s photos. The hold of the ship is covered in scratches as if a wild animal had been locked inside. She asks Felix about the boat, and he explains that people were always afraid of her mother, just like they’re afraid of Marie. The Russian owners of the boat have been missing a long time.
Felix then takes her to a dance club. Daniel is there too, and she whispers to him “I’m transforming into a monster, and I really need to get laid before. Do you think you can help me?” They go off to some abandoned building to do the deed, but when he touches her, she gets hairy in that spot. Her eyes turn yellow in the middle of sex. But he seems to be completely on board with it all.
She wakes up at home when her father and the doctor pin her down and try to inject her with the drug. She fights hard, but they don’t get to finish because Mom leaps and attacks the doctor, werewolf-style, killing him. Marie and Thor bury Larsen in the backyard. Marie asks Thor if that’s what happened to the Russians, who must have done something to her mother.
Next morning, the doctor is missing, and the townspeople think Thor’s wife had something to do with it. They need to look at Mom, naked, to be sure. They check her fingernails and gums. It seems the whole town is in on Mom’s little secret. Thor plays it cool and so does Marie.
When Marie comes home from work the next morning, she finds her mother drowned in the bathtub. Could it have been suicide, or did one of the townspeople do it to her?
At the funeral, Marie notices that her fingernails are bleeding. Everyone there stares at her, and it seems they realize their problems aren’t over. She refills everyone’s coffee with her bloody hands to make some kind of a defiant statement, literally waving it in their faces. She goes to work the next day, hairy chest and all. That night on the way home, she’s chased by a bunch of guys on motorcycles.
One of the bikers gets his throat torn out. Daniel finds her and warns her that the others are coming for her. He offers to get a boat while she goes home to pack her stuff – they will run far away together. Thor catches her leaving and lets her go. He tells her not to take any crap from anyone. The goons from work catch her before Daniel returns, but he does see them dragging her away.
The others load her aboard a fishing boat and lock her in one of the holds. The guys on the boat plan to tie her up and throw her overboard, but Daniel gets aboard and opens the hatch. Things go badly for the kidnappers and Felix, who betrayed her to the others.
Daniel comes out and hugs Marie. As the sun comes up, only she and Daniel are left. What now?
Commentary
It’s all super-bleak, dreary, and washed-out, as every scene is depressing and morose. Didn’t Thor ever realize that a little communication goes a long way? Most of what happened and the angst involved could have been avoided had he not been in denial for so long. But on the other hand, he was conflicted by loving a woman who was a killing machine. He didn’t want to have to keep her drugged, but he felt like he had to.
Daniel suspected, then knew, what Marie was going to become. He was not only okay with it but fully embraced it. An interesting choice.
At first, the condition appears to be genetic, but later on, there’s mention of the Russians doing something to Marie’s mother, so we don’t really know what caused all this. It’s definitely a disease, so the full moon, silver bullets, and the like don’t really apply here, but it’s clearly a lycanthropic condition of some sort.
Marie never really turns into a werewolf of the usual sort, but she gets a hairy face, claws, and big teeth. It’s a little different and a slow, dramatic burn more than a straight-up monster movie, but it’s really cool.