Film Review: Rökkur (English: Rift)

I am back from whirlwind travels abroad (to Iceland and France) and will unload some thoughts in a few posts, starting with last first. On the flight home I watched a very good Icelandic movie I would like to recommend: Rökkur/Rift.

This film is an atmospheric, psychological thriller, not very scary but gripping and unsettling. It is also an extremely well scripted story about human relationships. A thirty-ish university professor, Gunnar, gets a mysterious phone call from his ex-boyfriend, Einar, indicating he might be in trouble. Gunnar goes to see Einer at his family's remote getaway cabin to see if things are okay. Einar says everything's fine; he just called when he was drunk and lonely, but weird events soon suggest some presence may be haunting them.

I use the word "haunting" because it feels like that. The story may generically fall into Todorov's Fantastic, where you can't quite tell if anything actually supernatural is happening. On balance… probably not? But the atmosphere, nonetheless, is ghostly and Einar's past surely haunted.

It's also a very well written gay love story in that it's not all about the leads being gay but it is nonetheless aware of the particular social stresses that still accompany being gay for these Millennials.

( Very Light Spoilers )

On the whole, I highly recommend this movie to anyone interested in a strange and thoughtful story about human life and love, plus Iceland.