Rating: D+
Dir: Søren Juul Petersen
Star: Anne Bergfeld, Karin Michelsen, Damon Younger, Mads Koudal
a.k.a. The Ringmaster
I was hoping this was going to be like a Danish version of Inbred. It is not. Indeed, for the first hour or more, it’s more like a night in the life of a particularly uninteresting Danish petrol station. You have the two employees, Agnes (Bergfeld) and Belinda (Michelsen), looking bored and largely unbothered by customers. This is because Denmark is playing in the final of a football tournament – immediately making this a period piece, hohoho. Folk at various levels of creepiness show up, as does Belinda’s shitty boyfriend. For this is one of those “Yes, all men” movies, where there’s supposed to be a perpetual sense of threat. Maybe customer service isn’t the best choice of career for those so afflicted?
We do, at least, know something is going to happen eventually, because it keeps cutting forward to a mysterious sideshow. They are abducting young women, including this pair, and torturing them for the entertainment of an audience, both live and online. So at least we have that to look forward to, right? In fact, we’ve been anticipating it since a William Castle-like showman comes out at the start, to warn us that what we are about to see, “deals with the boundaries of good entertainment… It may shock you,” he says. “It might even horrify you.” He does not warn us, we first must sit through the documentary, Danish Convenience Store Employees On the Job.
Another voice over then proclaims “Welcome to Denmark. Land of fairytales, hygge, and home to some of the happiest people in the world. We will do our utmost today, to change all of that.” I was momentarily distracted by looking up what hygge is. You don’t want to know, trust me. While it’s nice to see a film with all these ambitions, I can’t say it was particularly successful. The ringmaster of the torture circus (Younger) has a certain gonzo charm, I admit. But I was never able to connect with Agnes, the daughter of the petrol station’s owner, or Belinda, just thrown out of the house by her mother. Why should I care? I only came down for a tube of Pringles. Sour Cream and Chives.
Things perk up somewhat once the film switches to full-time torture porn. Though I was distracted once more, this time by Googling “How much force is needed to pull someone’s feet clean off?” [Google AI no longer talks to me] It would have been interesting to learn more about this circus, and why its tech facility appears based out of a German caravan. It’s not very clear what, if any, point the makers are after. The end credits play out over paintings of gladiatorial combat, which suggest a “nothing has changed” vibe. They are not wrong, perhaps – just not in the way they think. Because Hostel basically did this, thirteen years earlier: capture, torture, escape. Jaded consumers nowadays might need more.