Midsummer (2003)

I was extremely surprised with this movie; as I did not expect anything out of it after watching a couple of "bad" movies being hyped by everyone as really "good" movies, so this one blew me away. The story is amazing and well put that until the last part it leads your thoughts into something else while the truth is at the far opposite side of that part, the acting is almost average except for Tuva Novotny as Linn and Kristian Leth as Christian, as both mastered their characters to the benefit of the movie. The story might not be an original one, but it had a clever twist starting with the mysterious suicide of Sofie, Christian's sister during a friend's party. After-wards, the movie follows the aftermath of the sudden suicide on Christian, his parents as well as his friends who we get to know each one of them in greater details as they all set to travel to Sweden on a regular trip. We'll know of Trine in particular who was a close friend of Sofie and develops an interest in Christian as well during the trip. As their relationship progress, Christian starts to witness a set of unexplained events starting with the car (the lights open by themselves, the car stops at a certain area in the woods...) as well as a small pink toy his sister was holding when she overdosed with pills which keeps appearing in strange locations, every time Christian leaves it safe with him. Then, Christian begins to suspect of Persson, the old guy who lives nearby to the point of searching his house when he was not around, only to discover a little girl's room in the upper level, in a house which has no current children. Christian tells his friends of those occurrences, believing that his sister is trying to contact him, which all attributes to his sadness over the sudden loss of Sofie, except Linn, who encourages him to speak and explore of such events and takes the lead in "playing" a game which tends to interact with ghosts. To the surprise of all of his friends, Christian gets indeed contacted by a ghost of a little girl, named Malin whose her child's room was the one he found at Persson's house, knowing from Linn that the little girl was lost for a while and all the town helped searched for her without much luck. The movie also gets you greatly suspicious of Persson, with his odd behavior, asking about Sofie in a strange manner as well as a disturbingly odd behavior from Trine as well... and Up until that moment, you could not predict the truth, the motives of the little girl's ghost and what its link with Sofie's suicide. The movie gets you clinging to the screen as the truth begins to unfold in an unexpected way... The ending is completely refreshing that is truthfully worth watching especially after the slow middle parts of the movie and all in all, it is an excellent horror movie, that if you are looking for something with a nice plot, far from the mainstream Hollywood tasteless ones, then this movie is the right one for you.

***MILD SPOILERS*** I watched this movie cause it was announced to be like a new milestone in danish horror, but it is quite a let-down.The film is in itself ok, has a lot of nice ideas. But honestly, the quija boards are a thing of the past and by no means scary anymore. There's so many cliches in this film, a list would be going too far.There's also a couple of very annoying characters aswell, especially the smart*** "Mark" played by equally annoying Jon Lange - I've seen a couple of other flicks with this guy and he isn't acting, he is being himself - nothing more, nothing less....to see him shot in the gutt in the end actually made me cheer...I was waiting for that....kinda cruel thing to say, but nevertheless true..Anyway, a mediocre film, nothing more, nothing less.. And I kinda got my eyes opened for Laura Christensen who is becoming kind of a babe - Saw her in Von Trier's "Kingdom" years ago, but she sure developed in all good ways of the word...Yummi!

I've seen this movie twice and it's good. It's not one of those movies where you leave the cinema absolutely amazed. But it was entertaining and scary, which was what I expected. The acting went from amazing to average/bad. A couple of the Danes, who had this movie as their debut movie, looked almost bad on the screen. You could easily see they almost didn't have an experience in the acting area. Lucky it wasn't any of the lead characters. The lead character which was played by Kristian Leth, was very good. He might not have been in a lot of movies, but he did the job very well. Laura Christensen wasn't too good in the beginning of the movie, but after some progress she started too become very good. The Swede, Per Oscarson, did a very good job, considering his rather small part. The one actress that really blew me away was the other Swede, Tuva Novotny, who plays Linn. She's an absolutely AMAZING actress. Which made a lot of the actors look so bad compared to her. Her character was fairly simple, but she still made her character one of the most interesting and enjoyable character. She's definitely an actress I will be looking out for. The movie itself was fairly good. It's main purpose was to be scary and that, I think, was succeded. I found myself being scared often. It's not a different scary movie, it's actually pretty much like any other scary movie, but I still think it made itself a tiny bit different in some way. I didn't become bored at all during the movie and I didn't regret spending my 2 x 7,5$ on this movie. But I most say, that Tuva Novotny's acting made the movie so much better. If she hadn't been in it, I probably wouldn't have gone in to see it for the second time.

Is Kristian Leth the greatest actor I have ever seen? Most probably - he puts people like Alan Rickman, Robert De Niro and Kevin Costner to shame!The script stinks however, but amazingly Leth holds it all together - such is his brilliance. It certainly won't be too long until someone like Tarantino or Woo snaps this guy up.Overall I'd give the film 8.9/10. Without Leth it probably would only receive 3.