The story here isn’t anything original: A British family heads out to a Scandinavian Island where the locals are…less than friendly. It’s becomes clear that it’s not that simple, however, as people start turning up dead. Soon, the movie shifts gears and the story has flown off the rails. This is good, as I wasn’t very excited by the first act.
The performances of Nick Frost and Aisling Bea as the parents of mostly adult children stand out, but the colorful characters are pretty interesting throughout. They avoid cliches pretty well, especially when the plot gets moving and some assumed motivations are thrown into the wind. Because of the nature of the plot (that I’m purposefully being vague about), you don’t learn much about anyone until later in the film, so I found my assumptions about what they were contradicted, seemingly for an effect. I’m not sure if it was entirely successful or not, but it didn’t throw me off too much.
It’s not as clever as it wants to be, but it was definitely interesting enough to keep me engaged. The movie takes the genre to some new places but ends up falling a little flat with presentation.
3 out of 5