I Remember You (2017)
Ég man þig (original title)
A story about a young man and woman who move into a
small abandoned town in Iceland to renovate an old house. Little do they
know the town has a dark history.
Director:
Óskar Thór AxelssonA story about a young man and woman who move into a small abandoned town in Iceland to renovate an old house. Little do they know the town has a dark history.
Country:
IcelandLanguage:
IcelandicRelease Date:
10 November 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
I Remember You See more »Company Credits
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It's surprising that anyone visits Scandinavia anymore, let alone
lives there. After all, judging by the spate of novels and their
cinematic/television adaptations that have been released in recent
years, a lot of terrible things happen there. That's certainly the case
in the new thriller from Icelandic director Oskar Thor Axelsson that
combines familiar Nordic thriller conventions with supernatural plot
elements. Compellingly creepy, I Remember You should well please the many fans of the genre.
The film, based on a best-selling novel by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
(breathlessly described in the publicity materials as the "Queen of
Icelandic Crime"), begins with an elderly woman hanging herself in a
church. Investigating the suicide is a female detective (Sara Dogg
Asgeirsdottir) and the only doctor available, Freyr (Johannes Haukur
Johannesson), a psychiatrist still grieving over the unexplained
disappearance several years earlier of his 8-year-old son during a game
of hide-and-seek.
A parallel storyline concerns a trio of yuppies — married couple
Garoar (Thor Kristjansson) and Katrin (Anna Gunnudis Guomundsdottir) and
their single friend Lif (Agusta Eva Erlendsdottir) — who arrive at a
rundown house on an island in the remote Westfjords region with the
intention of renovating it and turning it into a summertime B&B.
The film's tension slowly — and I mean slowly — increases as the
events become more and more mysterious. The suicide victim is found to
have burn marks in the form of crosses all over her back, many dating
back years, that correspond to the ones scratched on the church's walls.
Freyr's investigation leads him to discover that the elderly woman had
numerous friends who also died under mysterious circumstances and that
they may all be related by the death of a young boy decades earlier.
Meanwhile, Katrin, who recently gave birth to a stillborn son, begins
experiencing hallucinations which are either a result of her fragile
emotional state or supernatural forces.
The pic is ultimately stronger on mood than plotting, as it seemingly
takes forever for the storylines to merge and for the mystery to be
revealed. But that atmosphere is effective indeed, with the filmmaker
infusing the proceedings with ominous touches while thankfully foregoing
the sort of cheap jump scares to which he easily might have easily
resorted. Much as with the recent Michael Fassbender thriller The Snowman, the forbidding wintry landscapes on display are a story unto themselves.
I Remember You certainly traffics in clichés, such as its
central character of an emotionally tortured investigator dealing with
tragic events in his past. But the horror elements are relatively fresh
to the genre, with director Axelsson teasing them out in intriguingly
subtle fashion until the ending in which the various plot strands are
satisfyingly tied together.
Johannesson delivers a powerful turn in the lead role, vividly
conveying his character's anguish and his determination to get to the
bottom of the mysterious goings-on. And as is so often the case with
Scandinavian film thrillers, there's an array of supporting players with
memorable faces who embody their roles with fully lived-in
authenticity.
FINAL RATING: 8/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 7.5/10 OVERALL. An elderly woman's suicide leads to a series of mysterious events in this Icelandic horror thriller.God choice of a topic which is catching enough.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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