Faust 2.0
Directed by: Robert Selin/ Nicolas Debot / Johannes Pinter /
Allan Gustafsson / Micke Engström
Horror/anthology, 79 min
Sweden, 2014
Distributed by: Njuta Films
Almost every review you read on contemporary Swedish
horror film will start by telling you how rare Swedish horror is. How there really
isn’t a genre scene over here, how the scene is almost non existing… But that’s
wrong! Its really just bullshit written by people who don’t know their head
from their ass, because if they actually did bother to yank their head out of
their constrained collective bungholes, they would see that Swedish horror has
never been more alive than it is today. Yeah, sure, a lot of them are still
really low budget, kind of on the cheap side and have a general confusion of
keeping the story tight, but mark my word. Someday soon someone will check all
the right boxes and Swedish horror will make its mark once again. Sure, it may
have been something of a rarity say fixe, six, seven years ago, but now there’s
almost an avalanche of horror flicks from Sweden rumbling dangerously down the
slope. And that is a great thing, because with the heightened competition,
filmmakers who want to get into the genre scene are being forced to up their
game and show some balls, storytelling skills and how to use their craftsmanship!
We’ve already seen some really great examples of ferocious, delicious and
minimalistic masterpieces this past decade and I don’t really see it stopping
any time soon. Just fucking bring it!
I’m not going to waste your time with listing horror films that have come out
of Sweden since Thomas Alfredsson’s Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right one
In) 2008, but instead I’m gonna barge right into Faust 2.0 and give you the low
down on this spanking new anthology horror which is set to be released
domestically within a near future!
It’s a simple bang on the nail set-up, the Devil is
bemoaning the simplicity of men and women of today, and how easy it is to claim
their souls… with a simple “terms of acceptance”! You know that endless list of
conditions that you never read every time you update or install an application
or program for your smartphone or computer and cant be bothered to read but
just rapidly and instinctively hit the Yes button.
Faust 2.0 is basic anthology horror done by the book, sharing
five stories, strung together by Old Nick himself (voiced by Per Ragnar) and
his deceptive plan to destroy the world through our obsession with our smartphones
and their applications. Although with that said I would have enjoyed a bigger
and more visual wraparound in the vein of Amicus horrors wraparounds instead of
the brief, but still effective approach taken here.
As always, anthology horror is a mixed bag, and with mixed
bags you find good and bad. I’m not here to spoil anything or even rate the
individual pieces. Instead I can appreciate the work put into this piece of
genuinely independent cinema. Again, the more people make movies, the more the game intensifies and people have to sharpen up. It's called natural selection, competition is good, and we won't fall into the Bergman trap a second time. (As in, everyone hailed Bergman and forgot all about the other really amazing filmmakers we had like Widerberg, Mattsson, Halldof to name a few....)
The five stories are Robert Selin’s Bad News about a young
journalist in search of the perfect scoop – about the serial killer holding
Stockholm in an iron grip of fear – and discovers that she’s closer to that
scoop than she ever could have imagined. Johannes Pinter’s Inspirappition about an author with a serious case of
writers block about to get more inspiration and insight into an alternative
life than he ever could have dreamt about. Nicolas Debot’s See Alice about the
dangers of online dating and fucking strangers in your hotel room. Allan
Gustafsson’s Moral Call featuring Ghosts, guilt and cooperate dirty work, and
the final piece Micke Engström’s Nättrollets Diskreta Charm (basically the
Discrete charm of the net troll) telling the story of a heartbroken woman who
get’s help to reclaim her life but ends up with much more than she bargained
for…
As you see all stories have the anthology trait, last moment
sardonic twist, a generally dark comedic tone to them all, and all woven
together by the presence of that damned app the unfortunate cast all find on their smartphones.
Being smartphones and constant updates, I really dig the collective title of
Faust 2.0, as all short entries indeed are using the same premise of Goethe’s
Faust, where a soul is sold in favor of gaining something the protagonist
desires. And you never sell your soul to the devil and liv to brag about it, so
Faust 2.0 is a smart title. Well-done lads, especially since I know what the
working title was.
In a nutshell; Faust 2.0 is a rewarding showcase of low-key
horror, from a bunch of lads who obviously know what they are doing - and what
they can’t do on a limited budget. One could ask where the female indie
directors are in all this, because it would have been cool to see a woman’s
take on short form anthology horror once the hade the rules of their stories
decided – sell your soul, pay the price. Faust 2.0 is a collective piece, where
story is up front and the moral of mankind is questioned on more than one
occasion. What do you desire and what
price would you pay for it? There’s something for everyone here, you get
intrigue, jump scares, ghosts, drills to the head, explosions, vampires,
demons, serial killers and a few occasions of nudity if you’re seeking that
too.
Oh, and some really fucking great shots of Stockholm looking
beautiful at night!.
You can keep up to date with Faust 2.0 and check out some
behind the scenes stuff on their facebook page here.
https://www.facebook.com/fausttwopointzero
