Bad Faith (2010)

As a Swedish loser I'm kinda interested in the few genre films made in Sweden and I'm trying to watch everything, even if it's worthless. The last few years have seen a few films from Sweden that deals with death, murder, supernatural and horror - from excellent productions like Psalm 21 to mediocre failures like Marianne. What makes Psalm 21 strong is that it dares to be a horror movie, while Marianne never goes that far and delivers more or less nothing worth watching - not to mention that lame ending. Bad Faith (original title Ond Tro) kinda falls in the middle of these two.

Sonja Richter is Mona, a Danish woman who just moved to an anonymous Swedish town to start a new job. One evening she's invited out for after work but decides to take a walk first - and finds a stabbed man, bleeding to death in a dark alley. She leaves him and goes back to the after work, in shock. He's the latest victim of the Bayonet Killer - the fifth in just a couple of months. She stays home from work and soon she can't stop thinking of the murdered and it all becomes even more clear when she sees a man she thinks is the killer. The obsession takes over and she starts to investigate herself, getting closer to the killer - or is the killer getting closer to her?

Like my pal Cinezilla writes, there's a lot of giallo-vibes over the story and the haunting cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema surely invokes the seventies with those wide, almost voyeuristic shots - like someone is watching the characters from a distance all the time, trying to figure out what's going on. Something that's more worrying is that director Kristian Petri never seem to care for the thriller/horror aspect of the story, it almost feels like he thinks genre cinema is a bit to cheap for him (which becomes even more clearer when he's announced he's not terrible interested in zombies and his next movie is a movie about the living dead - I demand love for what you're doing).

Now, make no mistake, it's a well-told story with VERY uneven acting. Jonas Karlsson, one of the biggest stars in Sweden is almost unbelievably bad while Norwegian actor Kristoffer Joner gives a very fine performance. Leading actress Sonja Richter gives is both the worst and the best of her talent, which is a pity. Really. Ah, with bad acting I mean just very much "theater", an unability to say the lines natural. They sound weird, with words (and the order of words) like no one uses - and it's meant to sound realistic.

What I really like about Bad Faith is the almost mystical, odd feeling. It's something in the air, an electric atmosphere (much like another movie starring Kristoffer Joner, the good but still disappointing Next Door from 2005) , something is wrong. From the reactions of more or less every single character to the story itself. I was first very, VERY afraid this would be another of those twists where... well, I'm not gonna tell you, but they actually tries to put a red herring and there to that direction and that was my biggest. Thank heavens it didn't happen, and instead we got another ending that I liked - even if I felt that too many questions was unanswered in the end.

The Scandinavian DVD has English subs, so I think you should give it a try. But prepare it's a bit too pretentious for its own good.