The Trip

Covering a renowned festival like Fantastic Fest allows to discover many successful films, both American and from other countries. Some of them were highly anticipated, notably The Trip by Tommy Wirkola (Kill Bujo (2007), Dead Snow (2009), Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014)). While he built a solid reputation with the cult film saga Dead snow, we find here Tommy Wirkola as co-writer and director of a violent but not without humor and with Aksel Hennie and Noomi Rapace in the lead roles.

Lars (Aksel Hennie), a director, and his wife Lisa (Noomi Rapace), an actress, have decided to get together and go to a remote cabin in the woods near a lake to find some peace and quiet in their marriage. However, the apparent calm lets appear shadowy zones because Lars has well the attention to find his freedom and to do it to the attention to kill his wife who also wants to get rid of him. Things will become even more complicated when some thugs to whom Lars owes money will enter the dance and transform this quiet house into a real war zone.

If the trip (I Onde Dager) works so well, it's because it knows how to caricature the movie business as well as to propose several twists and turns perfectly brought and reminding us of the renewed vitality of Norwegian cinema. The director and co-writer delivers here a totally mastered film taking place practically in a house in order to face a budget that we feel restricted but without losing anything of its effectiveness. We must recognize that the duo Aksel Hennie and Noomi Rapace works perfectly and that the dialogues are particularly well done.

We easily understand the will of the director Tommy Wirkola to face the pandemic linked to Covid 19 and find a way to make a film independently but with great care. The Trip (I Onde Dager) is certainly a good surprise that keeps us on the edge of our seats until the end and does not hesitate to caricature the Hollywood system always ready to make endless remakes, to adapt various facts and to do everything to bring to the public its dose of adrenaline. After Dead Snow and its sequel, Tommy Wirkola offers us an efficient and quite funny thriller that deserves to be discovered while waiting to find him with a new American film The father with the cast no less than Donnie Yen, Alec Balwin and Frank Grillo.

The Trip (I Onde Dager)
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
Produced by Kjetil Omberg, Jørgen Storm Rosenberg
Written by Tommy Wirkola, John Niven, Nick Ball 
Starring Aksel Hennie, Noomi Rapace, Atle Antonsen, Christian Rubeck, André Eriksen, Stig Frode Henriksen, Nils Ole Oftebr
Music by Christian Wibe
Cinematography : Matthew Weston
Edited by Patrick Larsgaard
Production companies : 74 Entertainment, XYZ Films
Distributed by The Jokers (France), Netflix (Sweden)
Release date : October 21, 2021 (France)
Running time : 113 minutes

Seen on September 26, 2021 (Fantastic Fest)

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