Shadow Island

An unexpected freebie turned up (thanks to Merv) for this little Swedish thriller at the Scandinavian Film Festival. It's from a first-time writer/director called Johan Storm, and it's probably just be a coincidence that a load of this film occurs during storms. Our protagonist, David (Johan L. Heinstedt), finds a box full of his dead dad's old documents at his mum's house and this prompts him to shoot off to an island in the Arctic Circle, where his old man was doing some meteorological research. Or was he?

David sets up in the North lighthouse and soon encounters Sarah (Hanne Mathisen Haga) in the South lighthouse - first on shortwave, then later in person. Curious to find out what his dad was up to, David stumbles upon various things, from non-creepy mystery letters to a very-fucking-creepy dungeon inside a cave! Double your phobia pleasure right there. Oh, and they may not be the only living things on this murky, wind-swept island of fun. It's a pretty neat scenario and the beats hit nicely enough, it's no surprise now that the Scandis have a handle on lurking dread.

Unfortunately, a couple of story points lead to a rabbit hole of ALL CAPS...…WHY!?!? Maybe it's something missed in translation but there are a couple of head-scratchers within. These involve parts of the plot that might queer the pitch so I won't go into them, suffice to say in the wash-up, a key motivator didn't make a whole lot of sense. Also, I've been poring over google maps to try to work out exactly (or even roughly) were the island is. This may seem too pernickety but the geo-politics side of the story requires a modicum of accuracy. Again, this might be simple pimple to the Nordies but I was a bit puzzled.

Those qualms aside, this was a pleasantly tense mystery, with a couple of hairy moments. Not from the top drawer but diverting enough for a cold Monday evening.

I caught Shadow Island at the Luna Cinema as part of the Scandinavian Film Festival (which finishes very soon in Perth).

See also:

There were some underground bits that reminded me of Bong Joon Ho's supreme Parasite (2019). Another great Swedish thriller of sorts (that also played at the fest this year) is Ali Abbasi's Border (2018).