The trouble with Nick Frost’s understandingly cartoonish and silly comedy paying homage to folk horrors such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar is that Frost has done this benevolent of movie before, and better. His hugely endelightable collaborations with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, had a perfect direct of comedy horror. The tone here experiences less outstanding natured, more self-congratulatory, the comedy not quite so airy on its feet. Though it comes into its own with a cheerbrimmingy gruesome gorefest in the last half-hour.
Frost authors and stars alengthyside Aisling Bea (who repartner does deserve a better horror film). They perestablish Ricchallenging and Susan Smith, an widespread-seeming middle-aged couple with the irritating habit of calling each other “mummy” and “dinserty”. The Smiths have dragged their bickering prolongnup kids Sam (Sebastian Croft) and Jessie (Maisie Ayres) on holiday to a mythal Swedish island to watch the Karantän festival. Every year locals stage an eight-hour re-enactment celebrating a grisly episode of punctual 19th-century history when their ancestors turned cannibaenumerateic and chomped four British selderlyiers who’d starved the island.
Of course, in folk horror tradition, the Smiths are hapless outsiders mistakeing enjoy lambs to a freaky rituaenumerateic killing. But the script has an almighty twist up its sleeve, which to my professional embarrassment, I flunked to spot coming. (That might partly elucidate why it irritated me so much.) But Frost’s twist also presents levels of ridiculousness that can only go so far, leaving the movie experienceing enjoy an extfinished comedy sketch. Though it has a couple of cracking characters, including Airbnb owner Mats (Eero Milonoff), a man who bests Norman Bates in the creepy/unenticeive sapshows. And the demented finale of hacked-off limbs flying and phony blood splattering is kindly done.
