The movie is trying so hard to be horror but fails spectacularly at that during the first 15 minutes by missing one of the most basic things that make horror films scary: you do not fully introduce the monster/bad/evil/whatever to the audience at first. You keep building tension and giving small clues all the way to the end, and then do the big reveal. I'm not saying that this is the only acceptable way to write horror, but at least in this movie the deviation from that formula does not work, in my opinion.
After that huge blunder in the beginning, I was basically waiting for the movie to end. This is really unfortunate, since I think the topic of the film has a lot of potential. But no amount of sound effects, camera work, gore, ear-shattering screams or cheap, predictable jump scares is going to make me scared, because the tension is already ruined. CGI/puppet monsters are just not that scary to me. What is scary is the unknown. Horror movies usually scare me quite easily, but I wasn't even the slightest bit scared after the movie. That in and of itself should say a lot. The plot is quite standard, predictable horror stuff. The ending is fine, I was kind of indifferent towards it.
The film was advertised as a horror film, so that's what I expected it to be - and was disappointed. But I also tried to be merciful to the movie by thinking it as not a horror film, but some kind of "dysfunctional E. T. with gore". But since the movie is using all the horror tropes so blatantly, I could not give it even that. The family drama would be interesting, if they forgot about trying to be horror, and focused on that with some more subtlety. But it's all so in-your-face with these mostly caricature characters and obvious symbolism - a style that I think works better in horror movies, but since this movie fails as a horror movie, all of that just feels like an over-the-top fantasy drama. Which of course would be awesome, but again, the constant horror tropes prevent that from working. There wasn't even a real attempt to make the movie a dark comedy, that could have worked - but for the most part, this film is dead serious.
If there is anything positive, I have to give it to the actors, I think they are really doing a good job conveying the members of this twisted family. Especially the work of the actress playing Tinja is close to perfect.
All in all, I was actively disliking the film. Giving a 5/10 would mean that I was indifferent towards it, but I was so disappointed, that I have to give it a 4/10, unfortunately. Maybe this movie can be more enjoyable to people that enjoy their scary movies with only jump scares and gore, but I'm not one of them. I hope this is just a start for more high-profile (is this high-profile?) Finnish horror films.
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