- Directed by: Ali Abbasi
- Written by: John Ajvide Lindqvist, Ali Abbasi, Isabella Eklof
- Stars: Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff, Jorgen Thorsson
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMs28A1s1OA
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A strange looking customs officer is very good at her job, literally sniffing out when people are smuggling or up to bad things. It’s a talent that her coworkers, and soon the police, take seriously. Things get more complicated as we gradually learn who she is, and she gets mixed up with a guy who looks as strange as she does and has the same abilities. This was excellent. It’s well made and unique.
Spoilery Synopsis
Tina is a very unattractive border guard. She checks bags at the Swedish port. She busts a young guy for smuggling alcohol into the country. Credits roll.
She drives home to her cabin in the woods, and even the dogs don’t like her. She goes for a walk in the woods, barefoot, and the fox watches her. Her boyfriend, Roland, raises muscular dogs and he doesn’t like it when people call them “fighting dogs.”
At work, Tina sniffs the crowd and calls one man aside. They don’t find anything in the man’s bag, but she insists on smelling his phone. He’s hiding a memory card inside, and the man freaks out before being arrested. Later, she smells another passenger and he looks a lot like she does. She lets him pass.
That afternoon, she goes to the nursing home to visit her father, and it takes him a minute to remember her name. He worries that Roland is taking advantage of her, which he clearly does.
That night at home, she goes outside and pets a wild moose behind her house.
Agneta calls in Tina and wants to know how she “sniffed out” the memory card full of child porn from that guy yesterday. She admits she can just sense these things; “I smelled it on him. Shame, guilt, rage, and other things.” Agneta is a high ranking police officer, and she’s skeptical about the “smelling thing,” but she gives Tina a new assignment to help them locate the pedophile apartment.
We cut to Vore, the creepy man that Tina let through yesterday. He passes her again. She insists that he has something on him, and her coworkers know better than to argue. During the more intimate search, they learn that Vore is female – he has a vagina, beard notwithstanding. Vore has a scar on his tailbone, and we saw in a previous scene that Tina has one as well. They don’t find anything on her. The two look very similar, and there’s almost an animal attraction between them. And then Vore leaves.
Tina asks her father about her scar, and he says she fell on a rock as a little girl. She doesn’t remember it, but she also doubts his story.
In the daytime, she tracks down Vore, who feeds her a maggot; she tries it. She takes him home, and the dogs don’t like him, either. Still, they shut up when he growls at them. Roland is not pleased to meet Vore, who will be staying in the guest house. Vore kisses Tina, and she’s not sure what to make of it.
At work, Tina is continuing to stake out the child-porn guy’s apartment to try to catch the people who were making it. She sniffs out the right place. She finds people doing something to a baby and reports it. They go back later and find a camera and footage.
Vore explains that she’s not ugly, she’s better than most other people. She thinks she can’t have children, as there’s something wrong “down there.” He’s very understanding and insists that she’s fine.
Esther comes over and shows Tina and Vore her newborn baby, and that night, Vore goes out to the woods and gives birth. He mashes up more maggots to feed it before hiding the baby thing in the refrigerator.
Roland leaves to go to a dog show, but Tina knows he’s got a girlfriend waiting. There’s a thunderstorm, and both Tina and Vore hide under the table in terror as the lightning comes close. They’ve both been hit by lightning before. Later, he wants to have sex with her, even though she insists that she’s deformed. They go at it… like animals. She grows the parts she’s missing; she’s actually been a male this whole time. Sort of.
That night, he explains that she’s a troll, like him. She can smell evil and lightning chases her. She had a tail that was cut off and discarded when she was little. He knows of a small group of trolls in Finland. The following day, they frolic through the woods, naked. They’re in love. “Humans are afraid of us. And they should be. Vengeance is coming.” Humans performed medical experiments on Vore’s family.
Tina confronts her father about her whole life. His dementia doesn’t allow him to give a straight answer. When she gets home, she roars at the dogs and tells Roland he needs to move out– tonight!
Tina goes to the guest house and sees the fridge taped shut. She opens it and sees what’s inside. It’s a strange-looking baby.
At work, she continues to work on the pedo case, trying to find out where the babies came from. The suspect is ripped out of the police van and killed with the help of a moose, but no one sees who did it. Tina knows it was Vore and asks him about it.
Turns out, Vore was involved with the pedo ring. “I help them hurt themselves.” The thing in the fridge is not a baby; it’s a Hiisit, and it’s just fine in there. It’s like an unfertilized egg for trolls. He’s been saving it. “They come out of me regularly.” He swaps the hiisits for real children and then sells the human babies to the pedos. “They must suffer as we’ve suffered.”
Tina roars at him in anger and then goes out to the woods to eat worms. She hears an ambulance and follows it to Esther’s house. She sees that her new baby has been switched with the hiisit. She rushes home to find Vore gone. “You’re not human. Meet me at the ferry,” says the note he left.
She finds Vore on the ferry. He wants them to carry on their race, but she doesn’t want to be evil and has him arrested. He jumps overboard instead.
Tina’s father explains her origins. Most of the others of her kind didn’t live for very long. Her name was Reva. When she gets home, there’s a baby, in a crate on her porch. It’s got a little tail and a beard. She feeds it a bug, and it smiles. There’s also a postcard from Finland. Will she go?
Brian’s Commentary
It took hours in the makeup chair to get Tina’s makeup on. The prosthetics here are really convincing. She looked like a Neanderthal or something similar from the very first scene. We also see that she’s got a very close affinity with animals. Obviously, she’s not quite human or something, but the rest of the movie is about us learning the rest of the story.
I liked how all Tina’s coworkers had seen her be right so many times that they never really doubted her ability to smell evil on people.
This one is very different, interesting and engaging all the way through. Very entertaining!
Kevin’s Commentary
This had a great story structure, letting us see that Tina isn’t quite normal right from the beginning, and filling in the gaps as it goes along. The makeup on the two of them is completely realistic. I thought it was an exceptional movie, probably going to be one of the favorites I’ve seen this year.