Director: Jonas Åkerlund
Screenplay: Jonas Åkerlund and Dennis Magnusson, based on the book Lords of Chaos by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind
Starring: Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Jack Kilmer, Sky Ferreira, Valter Skarsgård
Running Time: 118 minutes
Genre: Horror, thriller, crime, music
Norway, the late 1980s: Teenager Øystein Aarseth (Culkin), known as Euronymous, forms groundbreaking band Mayhem and creates a new subgenre: True Norwegian Black Metal. The band begin to attract a lot of attention in the Metal scene, with troubled lead singer Pelle Ohlin (Kilmer), who calls himself "Dead". Euronymous soon finds has his own record store and record label, Deathlike Silence, and signs singer Kristian Vikernes (Cohen), who calls himself Varg. However, it soon becomes much darker, as some begin to act on the group's evil, Satanic persona leading to suicide, a spate of high-profile arson attacks on churches and murder.
This film is based on the early years of the Norwegian Black Metal music scene from the late 1980s until 1993. The opening title of the film states that it is "Based on Truth... And Lies... And What Actually Happened", so I don't know how accurate or not it is, and Black metal is not really my taste in music, so i really know nothing about it. However, I did like this film. It has a curious mix of tones though, moving from typical music biography material (the band get together, struggle, there are conflicts, the band achieve some success, there are more conflicts, break ups and make ups and so on), almost goofy Spinal Tap style humour, and some deeply disturbing scenes. There are several long, brutally shocking scenes of violence in the film that even I, hardened horror fan as I am, found hard to watch. Throughout the film, the characters are very dismissive of "posers", and yet they are kind of posers themselves, they adopt this Satanic, dark evil persona to shock and frighten people, and have their own little exclusive club (called the "Black Circle"), but some take it way too seriously. The performances are good, even if some of the actors seem a little too old and clean cut for the roles that they are playing. The film feels too long at times and the pacing feels off at times, but it is still a compelling and genuinely disturbing true-life horror film.
No comments:
Post a Comment