Scandinavian horror is a particularly chilling subset of the genre — for obvious reasons (duh, it’s cold there), but also because filmmakers from that region tend to construct films blending slow-burn dread with sudden moments of otherworldly terror. I Remember You looks very much in that vein.
Image: IFC
Like Sweden’s frosty vampire tale Let the Right One In, Iceland’s I Remember You is based on a best-selling novel. The creatures are not quite so apparent in the trailer for Óskar Thór Axelsson’s adaptation of the latter, however. A child’s unsolved disappearance haunts his family — and then other things begin haunting other people, too, and some very dark local history starts coming to light.
The word scrawled on the wall (or walls, it looks like), is “ohreinn,” which translates to “dirty” (in the “impure” sense). Here’s the official synopsis, courtesy of IFC Midnight, which suggests there’s a lot more spookiness to this movie than the cryptic trailer reveals:
An elderly woman hangs herself in a church. A grieving father searches for the truth about what happened to his missing son. And a trio of young city dwellers unleash a sinister force when they begin renovating a cursed home on a remote island. They don’t know it yet, but each of these strangers is connected by a disturbing, decades-old secret — a mystery that holds the key to a series of terrifying supernatural events.
Based on the acclaimed novel by the “Queen of Icelandic Crime,” this atmospheric chiller is both a hair-raising ghost story and a powerful tale of life beyond death.
Here’s the grim-looking poster, too:
