Euthanizer

Certainly original with a permutation of genres throughout that leaves this not yielding to any one definition. Dark yes, comedic yes, beautifully European. Some will cringe, some will laugh. Involves some human and animal trauma, be warned, though all of it justified in the films universe by the philosophy of a character. I wont be forgetting about this film, though I wish I did not watch it, pretty heavy and gnarly in places. Humor this dark, for me, is more dark than humorous. I must be getting old !! :)

Euthanizing a pet is a painful and awful process. Some people are wary of taking their pet to a veterinarian for this service. This is where Veijo steps in. He provides a pet euthanizing service that is outside the scope of the law as well as professional standards. Customers get what they pay for. Veijo's price is a sliding scale. The better Veijo believes the customer cares for their pet, the better the price. The toll goes beyond money and into the realm of karmic retribution. Veijo believes that people need to suffer for the pain they cause. Those who do not take responsibility for their animals are subject to biting lectures, insults, price increases, violence and other odd penalties. When it becomes apparent that Veijo's blunt, impulsive and harmful behavior is not limited to his customers, the wheels of true karma and justice begin to churn.

This dark and wacky comedy is a welcome antidote to the neutered and boring slop that pervades much of the airwaves and networks of the world. The story, characters and themes are refreshing and intriguing. However, the film could benefit from more depth and support across the board; dialogue, cinematography, plot, organization, funding and more. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Teemu Nikki's 2017 "Euthanizer" (Armomurhaaja) is a brutal, unflinching film that straddles the uneasy line between drama, horror, and black comedy. It tells the story of Veijo (Matti Onnismaa), a misanthropic mechanic in a bleak Finnish rural town who moonlights as a low-cost executioner of unwanted pets.

His methods are neither clinical nor kind - gasifying animals with old car exhaust fumes, suffocating them in sacks, or shooting them in the woods - but he believes his work is a necessary mercy. In contrast, the local veterinarian, who represents a more "civilized" yet commercialized approach to euthanasia, sees him as a competitor. Society at large, however, simply despises him.

Nikki crafts a cruel and filthy world, both literally and metaphorically. The film is steeped in grime, grease-streaked hands, sweat-soaked undershirts, and the rusted remains of cars and lives abandoned to decay. But its filth runs deeper, exposing the moral contradictions of human nature.

Veijo's self-imposed role as an executioner expands beyond animals when he takes it upon himself to rid the world of their cruel, unlovable owners. In a narrative that subtly plays with karma, it's a film that asks: Who truly deserves mercy? And who decides?

The performances in "Euthanizer" shift between heightened realism and something almost grotesque. Onnismaa's Veijo is a man burdened by a philosophy of justice that isolates him, yet the film never makes him sympathetic in a conventional way. He's a man of conviction but not of warmth, a character whose moral rigidity leads him to dark and irreversible places.

Surrounding him are figures that blur the lines between good and evil: a sadistic gang member, a passive-aggressive veterinarian, a woman drawn to Veijo's brutality. Everyone in "Euthanizer" is, in some way, repulsive - and yet, the film compels us to watch them, to wrestle with the discomfort they provoke.

There's something almost mythic in Nikki's storytelling. He presents a world where the agony of men and animals are intertwined, yet treated differently, with an implicit suggestion that some lives hold more value than others.

But "Euthanizer" doesn't offer easy compassion. It's brutal, unflinching, and resolute in its vision. Its grungy aesthetic keeps the film grounded, even as its morality drifts into the surreal.

By the time the story reaches its inevitable, grim finale, we're left with a lingering unease - a testament to Nikki's ability to turn the grotesque into something deeply compelling.

"Euthanizer" is not a film for everyone. It's not mainstream, nor does it seek to be. It's deliberately slow, demanding more than passive viewing - it insists on deeper engagement.

It is a story of justice disguised as cruelty and cruelty disguised as justice - an ugly, unrelenting meditation on the cost of mercy.

This is a dark short incursion into the dark side of the human nature. Veijo is a haunted older guy who takes upon himself to pay retribution to those who hurt animals, according to his own understanding of how karma works. He is fair and relentless, he doesn't make excuses and he often gives lesson to those who deserve them, in one way or another. He has his own moral code: you need to take accountability for the pain and hurt you caused others, and if you don't you must be obliged. He considers that those people who are aggressive they are lost, they don't know their place under the sun, they are lost and with no purpose or understanding of their lives, so they hurt others because they have no identity, no inner core, no resilience inside them. He takes the role of a euthanizer in his conflict with a lost soul, excellently played by Jari Virman, only to end up dealing with his own karma.

Later we find out that Veijo himself is a troubled soul, through the strain relationship with his father. Good circular script, with good lines and a strong character, well played by Matti Onnismaa.

A small, confined and precisely executed movie about an emotionally scarred middle-aged man, who euthanizes pets - and judges their owners while doing it. It's sort of missing the point to call Armomurhaaja a thriller; at its core Armomurhaaja is a comedy, a very, very dark comedy about moral relativism and purism. Topics that are visited in movies way too rarely. Armomurhaaja is the bluntest examination on morality seen on the silver screen in ages. And a successful one at that. Actor Onnismaa's cantankerous, unrelenting, uncompromising, stubborn and anachronistic character demands to be taken seriously, because he will not sell out his values, and makes a convincing argument that his values - while not his methods - should be universal values.

The experienced Teemu Nikki is an original thinker, and knows how to make movies. Armomurhaaja looks about five times its budget (the IMDb estimated production cost is, if anything, an over-estimation) and is told in a sure-footed manner. It is also the best friend an animal, a pet, can have in the cinemaverse.