A TEACHER RETURNS TO HIS EX-BOYFRIEND'S ISOLATED HOUSE
★★★★☆ (Worth the Watch)
Director: Erlingur Óttar Thoroddsen
2017
A front door that doesn’t close properly. A figure just outside the headlights on a dark highway. These are the images that serve as foreplay for Rift (Rökkur), an Icelandic horror film about a man who hurries back to his former boyfriend after receiving a disturbing call. I had preconceived notions that this would be a mild movie about the haunting of one’s lost love, but I was wrong. Rift scared me so much, I wish hadn’t watched it before bedtime. Like eating a hot pepper, the intensity really snuck up on me.
Gunnar is a severe older man who claims to have moved on from his relationship with the younger, more playful Einar. But one night, when Einar leaves a voice message about the vacation home they spent time in, Gunnar drops all Christmas plans to make the journey back. We get the impression that Einar has threatened suicide in the past, so Gunnar—despite insisting they are through—drives for hours just to make sure his ex doesn’t harm himself.
An air of danger exists for anyone driving on these lonely roads—this is a place to get lost in. The house in question is an Instagram-worthy building in an extraordinary setting. Flat fields with nothing stretch for miles along the backdrop of a crystal blue glacier; visuals of pastel skies against hardened lava give many shots a contrast that compliments this couple who are themselves, opposites. As Gunnar arrives, he finds a happily surprised Einar relaxing in one of these rough fields, but their reunion goes from polite to strained…until someone else shows up to the party in the middle of the night.
As Rift competently switches from eerie scene to sad conversation between men who once loved one another, back to eerie scene, the mystery of who is stalking them after dark becomes so much more than a tool to scare us. Björn Stefánsson does a magnificent job playing Gunnar with a matter-of-fact acceptance, while Sigurður Þór Óskarsson gives the sweet, alcoholic Einar an innocence; both performances are real and keep us balanced as the landscape dazzles with supernatural auras. After getting to know them, we would like these men to become lovers again, but someone else has other plans. Whether it’s fate or ghosts or a murderer, we’re kept in suspense until the very end.
GENRES: Atmospheric, LGBTQ+, Psychological
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