REVENGE: An Intriguing But Uneven Scandinavian Thriller

Revenge – not to be confused with the celebrated feminist thriller from filmmaker Coralie Fargeat that was released earlier this year – has the strongest opening sequence I’ve seen since last year’s Thelma. Coincidentally, both Revenge and Thelma hail from Norway, a country whose dramatic landscape is breathtakingly beautiful to look at, but at the same time gives off an air of natural menace. One cannot help but feel the danger emanating from the snow-capped mountains, the rocky cliffs, and the unfathomably deep fjords.

As the opening credits roll in Revenge, one follows the lead character’s car through the remote Western Norway countryside to a tiny town on the edge of the fjords, as the haunting vocals of Norwegian artist Thea Hjelmeland echo in the background. It’s incredibly simple and not altogether different from so many other opening sequences, but the unique beauty of Norway and the perfect pairing of song ensure that from the opening frame, one is enraptured by Revenge.

Yet the rest of the film doesn’t quite live up to this strong beginning, thanks to an unfortunately tangled plot with some hard-to-ignore holes.

Secrets and Lies

When the driver of the car arrives in town, she introduces herself as Andrea (Siren Jørgensen), a travel writer looking to do a feature on the man who runs the local hotel, Morten (Frode Winther). Morten is the golden child of the town, married to an equally golden woman named Nina (Maria Bock), father to a new baby girl, and potentially running for mayor. Yet behind his handsome face lies a dark secret – one that only Andrea and a few others know about.

Andrea immediately arouses suspicion from the audience, showing up at Morten and Nina’s with a big old kitchen knife in her bag before running into the bathroom to throw up, unable to do the violent deed she had arrived there to do. Gradually, one learns that Andrea – an alias, her real name is Rebekka – is seeking revenge on Morten for an assault he committed against her younger sister, Emma, nearly twenty years ago when Emma was only 13. Unable to recover from the trauma, Emma eventually killed herself; Rebekka seeks to take Morten’s life in retribution.

Yet instead of simply killing him, Rebekka decides to do something possibly even more disturbing: she ingratiates herself into Morten and Nina’s idyllic life, staying in their house and helping care for their baby, while she slowly sets about destroying Morten’s reputation in the community. She wants him to live knowing what he has lost. When she discovers that Morten was actually publicly accused of another assault by a young local woman named Maya (Helene Bergsholm) – a notorious wild child who no one believes – Rebekka realizes she has her work cut out for her.

Better Left Unknown

Directed by Kjersti Steinsbø, this Revenge does share some of the feminist themes of Fargeat’s blood-soaked minor masterpiece. Both involve a woman seeking, well, revenge, against a man who has committed assault, willing to do whatever it takes to ensure he meets some form of vigilante justice. Both are set in a remote area where there is little interference from the authorities in the increasingly intense events that unfold, and where the landscape plays almost as important a role in the film as the characters sneaking around within it.

Yet where Fargeat’s film plays it deceptively simple, Steinsbø’s feels unnecessarily complicated. Most of Rebekka’s plan is just too far-fetched and risky to be believable. Early on, Rebekka steals Morten’s phone and replaces the number of his friend’s attractive teenage daughter, Sara (Kine Bortheim Jentoft), with her own. She then begins sending Morten dirty text messages in the hope of luring him into committing another crime. Yet I just couldn’t wrap my brain around why someone who saw firsthand how an assault ruined the lives of Emma and Maya – and was so righteously enraged by that – would then potentially put Sara in a similar, dangerous situation.

There also is a gaping hole in Rebekka’s travel writer alias that isn’t pointed out until far too late in the movie – if she writes for such an important publication that everyone has heard of, why can’t anyone find her articles online? Why would Rebekka give herself such a stupid alias in the first place? Perhaps she was banking on Morten’s ego getting the better of him, which indeed it does; so flattered that he’s being profiled for a publication, he just goes with it and takes Rebekka-as-Andrea at her word. But it’s too hard for the audience to do the same. And as the film continues, more and more of these silly situations start to really stretch the audience’s capacity for belief.

Despite these and other ridiculous plot points, Revenge is, for the most part, an enjoyable film. As Rebekka, Jørgensen is the perfect avenging angel, with a subtle aura of menace that gradually seeps into the atmosphere of the town and causes them to question everything they known about Morten. The early scenes, in which Rebekka’s mysterious plot to take down Morten is only just starting to take a shadowy shape, ooze incredible tension – it’s impossible to guess what this desperate, angry woman will do next.

The film’s score, editing, and cinematography all work in tandem to add to the creepy atmosphere. But once Rebekka starts actually executing her plan, this bitter pill of a film becomes increasingly hard to swallow.

Revenge: Conclusion

Revenge starts strong, fueled by the intense draw of the unknown. Yet as more and more is revealed, the film runs out of steam, crashing to a less-than-satisfying conclusion.

Revenge is in theaters in the U.S. on September 11, 2018. You can find more international release dates here.