No Rest for the Wicked

Set against the harsh, unforgiving landscape of the 19th-century Faroe Islands, NO REST FOR THE WICKED, directed by Kasper Kalle, plays out like Céline Sciamma’s breathtaking PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, only if it were a queer Danish vampire film with folk-horror flavours and a definite Gothic undertone. The film’s stark, yet sometimes dreamy and uncanny atmospherics recall the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer or even Robert Eggers, while its full-blooded beating heart is as much an ode to the painful longings of Gothic romance as to the genre’s cruelties and horrors.

Baldur (Egor Venned), a young man left as sole provider for his mother Alsa (Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen), following his father’s early death, lives the quiet life of a fisherman, bound as much by expectation as by geography. Yet he finds the potential call to a new adventure outside of the island, in the arms of a stranger: Helge (Pilou Asbæk of GAME OF THRONES, A HIJACKING, AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINDGOM, and GHOST IN THE SHELL), a charming, drifter whaler, who has found himself stranded on the island. As the relationship develops in a shroud of necessary secrecy, Baldur’s duty to family and community, and the oppressive atmosphere of devout Christianity that governs daily life, threaten to keep them apart. That is, until a terrible accident strikes, and Baldur sets out to prove his love for Helge is strong enough to transcend the strictures of a callous religious morality, and even mortality itself.

NO REST FOR THE WICKED draws on the Gothic vampire cycle, but returns it to its folkloric origins, while also adding imaginatively radical and nightmarish elements yet unseen into the heady mix. The film also benefits from a strong yet intimate supporting cast, which includes Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson (CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD, SUCCESSION, VIKINGS: VALHALLA) and Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen (LIMBO, MØRKELAND). – Kat Ellinger

Trailer...