Immediately after watching this Icelandic mystery I am somewhat on the fence about it, but I fear my enthusiasms for it will be overshadowed in the coming days by it's many weaknesses. Typical of what's at issue; there are many strong directorial touches - effective visual compositions and involving scenes that leave you feeling like a peeping tom as the film makes us a mute witness into the troubled lives of the damaged souls who are the possible suspects, and the troubled life of the lead investigator, and the troubled life of the victims' mother. In lesser hands these might be nothing more than time-wasting scenes of needless red-herrings but the film seems to be making the case that everyone is damaged by something, and everyone can just as easily be a victim as a villain. But to praise the direction you have to ignore a scene rather pointlessly, and obviously, copying a similar scene from Fincher's Zodiac, except here it makes no sense. In Zodiac the frightened character was a cartoonist completely out of his depth, but here it's the lead investigator supposedly within their depth. In Zodiac the crimes showed that anyone could become a victim, but here it's only been two little girls murdered and they are investigating sexual offenders, not murderers anyway (which also makes no sense since neither child was molested, although seemingly everyone else in the movie has been at one time). There is also a clunky "return to the scene of the crime" sequence where the detective is attacked but it is so abrupt, while at the same time not being shocking in the least, that one wonders is it a directorial intention to keep us uninvolved or is it that they don't know how to stage such a scene? And the fact that it is never again addressed in the context of the film makes it feel like it was simply added after the fact. Considering the number of other plot holes that appear, it's probably guilty of simply being another one of those.
The performances are uniformly excellent from the actors, but key characters are poorly defined or given behavior that contradicts how we are expected to view them. The lead detective is supposed to be the typical "best they have" while at the same time she is completely, and almost criminally, ineffectual throughout. In fact ALL of the police are depicted as incompetent. And yet, that doesn't seem to be an intentional theme. Similarly the mother is shown to us as devastated by what has happened to her little girls and then, in private, she exhibits suspicious behavior that is never addressed or explained even though it serves to complicate the possible apprehension of her children's killer.
Sadly, even as I am writing this review I am noticing how quickly the better aspects of the film are fading and the problems with story and development are quickly overshadowing any other appreciation. A recommendation would then be hinged upon how much such issues bother the potential viewer.
