Friday, 23 February 2024

VOD: There's Something In The Barn (dir: Magnus Martens, 2023)

"It's f**king freezing!"
"Hey - don't use the f-word!"
"You're right.  I'm sorry.  It's f**king cold!"

An American family moves to remote rural Norway after inheriting a farmhouse with a view to converting the barn into a B&B, but the resident ancient Barn Elf has other ideas...  This unpretentious mash-up of Christmas, creature-feature and fish-out-of-water movie tropes embraces its inherent silliness and has fun with it.  It balances its comedy and mild-horror elements well, the ultra-snowy scenery is attractive, and there are nice nods to the likes of E.T and Gremlins and the zany horror stylings of Tommy Wirkola.  It ends up with a lively madcap finale in which the family finds itself under siege from a gang of angry elves on Christmas Eve.  The film is slight and occasionally underpowered and slow, but overall it is a fairly entertaining slice of festive nonsense.


 

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