Skyggen

Very nice! Danish sci-fi action thriller.

It is not per se a good movie, but I still enjoyed it a lot. 90s scifi and tech lingo like "cyber", "techno" and "hyper" along with how being a "webmaster" is top of the crop (since this is from back when www was peak technology) is very interesting looking back at it now. I dig the kitschy "future" graphics and 90s tech vibe, as it really catches the zeitgeist, even if the movie itself is a bumpy ride. The jungle and techno soundtrack is great even today though.

The bad parts is the at times terrible acting. The main character Lars Bom does a good job, but the other performances are very uneven. The script sometimes feel awkward and probably carries a lot of the blame for making the acting seem off, as some parts of the plot seem underdeveloped and silly. The movie is really cool in places, but that probably only exacerbates the bad moments and make them stand out more.

The movie has all the right elements to become a cult classic though. Never groundbreaking, but it perfectly captures how the future was imagined in the 90s. The movie would have looked cheesy and amateurish back in '98 (and still does), but nostalgia makes many of its shortcomings seem charming instead of damning, and the movie is probably better in 2021 than it was then.

I watched the non-dubbed version with English subtitles by the way.

The look of this movie is definitely inspired by "Blade Runner", and it looks pretty cool. It's very dark, and there are a lot of people wearing strange clothes. I guess the directing is fine, but the acting is very superficial. And a lot of the so called one-liners completely tank! Also you've heard the story before: Our hero, J.B., has to find out who stole his boss' money or he dies. The whole race-against-time concept has been used several times before, and the use of it in this film isn't very good. Watch this movie for it's set design, because that is spectacular.

This movie is somehow a different Danish movie. At this time the Dogme-agreement is mentioned all the time, but this movie has managed to become outstanding without being a Dogme-movie.

Skyggen (or The Shadow) is not only characterized by great actors, but it's also a fine presentation of "computer-films". I like the way "Techno-staden" is build, and the way Lars Bom portrays JB is fantastic. He is a very fine actor!

If you haven't already seen this movie - go see it. It's definitely worth spending time on.

My hopes of seeing "arthouse cyberpunk" in a Danish style ended in disappointment. The film seemed to have several grave problems: the plot was simple to the point of being cheap, the quality of filming and cutting was inconsistent, use of computer graphics was from the 80's and numerous erotic scenes were "out of context". The movie fails to portray any innovative and philosophically interesting insights to the future of cyberspace. Since the budget has apparently limited visual and technical aspects of the film, the artistic and philosophical aspects should have been emphasized.