Koko-di Koko-da

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2019, where it was part of the official Tiger Competition. It is not a variation on A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick 1971) or Funny Games (Haneke 1997) that I deduced from the synopsis, but very different. It kept us awake and let us suffer along with the candidate vicitims. I was glad that the recurrent encounters with the evil threesome were very different each time, luckily leaving out redundant repeats from previous instances, like the discussion in the car about B&B versus tent. The role of the white cat is not clear to me, maybe just a gimmick letting us wonder whether its recurrent appearances were intended to mean something.

There is no morale or message embedded in the story, other than Tobias and Elin stopping their previous mutual nitpicking in the final scene and visually were connected again. What still puzzles me is that only Tobias seems to remember the previous encounters with the evil threesome, albeit only part of it and only knowing that some awful things are about to happen again, contrary to Elin who has no reminescenses at all. On the other hand, we see Elin following the white cat in a nightly quest of her own. Another mystery is why the evil threesome pops up at places far away from the camping spot where the couple fled from, after a fruitless attempt to evade unhappy encounters like the previous.

All in all, a lot of things are not understood but may mean something. The movie does not make me long for a real explanation, however. The only morale or message that I could deduce from this movie was that the couple may have been at a breaking point in their relationship when the story started, but were visibly together again near the end after the dire events they went through.

However... I liked it. I thought it started out strong. I liked where the story was going and thought the acting was great. The story didn't stay as engaging as I wanted it to though. It was repetitive (obviously) but not with enough variation.

There are so many different ways it could have gone each time. Some quick, some slow. Some more creepy, some more funny. Some with more hope and some with more despair. And with each of those variations we could have observed a new window into a different facet of each characters emotions and how they would manifest in said scenario. Instead we got almost identical emotions each time, panic and confusion, so we really only saw one side of each character. Missed opportunity for me there.

And listen, I'm here for a long shot. Especially if it's beautiful and/or really trying to drive a point home or stir an emotion or feeling. There were many long shots in this that it almost felt like they ran out of ideas and wanted to fill 85 minutes. You could've taken all of those superfluously long shots, cut each one of them in half, still gotten the point across just as effectively and had another whole rewind to do something cool with.

Now that that's out of the way, I really did actually enjoy this movie. It was not perfect, but it was cool and creepy with (what seemed like to me as an English speaker) really good and authentic acting. If they had pushed it just a little harder I think they could have had something really special and erie on their hands. Also, I feel as if they had driven home the point/moral at the end a bit more... i'm not asking you to spoonfeed it, but with the overall atmosphere of the movie, if the ending had been a little bit more poignant I feel like it would've really given it that parable feel like I was already getting from the piece.

Would recommend, just not to everybody.

... and you're still overwhelmed from the loss of a child a few years earlier, then be prepared for some surreal, dark and psychedelic like goings on from a trio of weird wood wanderers. Extremely bizarre and fantastical, an imaginative way to emphasise the challenge of overcoming loss and the torment that loss can infuse in the minds of the emotionally tortured.

Liked: Fun creepy song, good acting, creepy antagonists.

Disliked: Ending sucked, too vague, felt artsy for the sake of artsy.

I really felt they had something here until the final act, zero conflict resolution for me. I'm all for symbolism and artsy metaphors, but here I just felt like I was trying to make connections as to why or how this was happening much too often with little success.

It's a metaphor and a groundhog day style that won't appeal to everyone. My brother called it "weird", my girlfriend said she "didn't get it, but I knew you would love it" and yes, I loved it.

It's a fantastic concept and a good way to show the difficulties dealing with trauma, mourning and ptsd. Take it how you want it, is this a real horror movie? It's just a dream? Are they really stucked there? Is something real here? Well, the trauma and a couple relationship going down is definitely there and following that cat is necessary to understand how to overcome and to learn how to move on.

Good atmosphere, creepy and tense. You need a little patience, but I think It's one of the most original ideas in the genre in the last years.