Plot
16-year old Marie lives on a small island with her seriously ill mother and her father, who takes care of the family. But suddenly mysterious deaths happen and Marie can feel something strange happening to her body.
Release Year: 2014
Rating: 5.8/10 (1,251 voted)
Critic's Score: /100
Director: Jonas Alexander Arnby
Stars: Sonia Suhl, Lars Mikkelsen, Sonja Richter
Storyline
16-year old Marie lives on a small island with her seriously ill mother and her father, who takes care of the family. But suddenly mysterious deaths happen and Marie can feel something strange happening to her body.
Writers: Rasmus Birch, Christoffer Boe
Cast: Sonia Suhl -
Marie
Lars Mikkelsen -
Thor
Sonja Richter -
Mor
Jakob Oftebro -
Daniel
Stig Hoffmeyer -
Dr. Larsen
Mads Riisom -
Felix
Esben Dalgaard Andersen -
Bjarne
(as Esben Dalgaard)
Gustav Dyekjær Giese -
Esben
(as Gustav Giese)
Benjamin Boe Rasmussen -
Ib
Tina Gylling Mortensen -
Jonna
Taglines:
The truth is known to all but one
Country: Denmark, France
Language: Danish
Release Date: 28 August 2015
Filming Locations: Thyborøn, Jylland, Denmark
Box Office Details
Budget: $3,000,000
(estimated)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
User Review
Author:
Rating: 6/10
As a Dane I hate to say it, but most Danish movies are pretty bad. And
what's perhaps even worse: a lot of Danish (and now also international)
movie critics still give these movies positive reviews. This is
certainly the case with this movie, which, while perhaps not especially
bad, is certainly not especially good, either. But hey, Danish movies
and TV shows are in vogue these days. With enough support and praise,
these products of Denmark might well begin to get better in due course.
"When Animals Dream" is about a provincial fishing village, where a
19-year-old girl is beginning to find out about her mother's strange
disease, which necessitates keeping the mother sedated in a wheelchair
like a vegetable. The girl, Marie, has inherited the disease, and
starts very (very) slowly turning into a werewolf. And SHE won't be
sedated.
Sonia Suhl, a new young actress, is good as Marie, and a very good fit
to play the daughter of Sonja Richter, who plays the mother. Lars
Mikkelsen as the father is also fine. But the movie as a whole is
slow-moving and laconic, giving too few clues about when and why things
happen, and while well-produced in some ways, it is too obviously
low-budget in others. The rest of the cast are not well-developed.
Now, the great stable of Danish film-making, which almost always
ensures a project being financially supported by the Danish Film
Institute, is social realism. This movie is stuffed with it, as well,
and hasn't got that much werewolf action in it, which is a pity. If
you're a genre fan, it's a little bit yawnsville. Or a lot.
There are two ways to interpret the movie. One is that Marie's turning
into a werewolf represents a coming-of-age journey and sexual
awakening. That's how mainstream critics understand this movie.
However, if you look at the movie in terms of the fantastic genre
(which I believe is much more proper in this case), the artistic twist
is that the werewolf represents true and beautiful human nature, which
is being destroyed and actively suppressed in provincial dumps
populated by repressed, conservative bigots. All things considered,
though (such as how powerful the movie is, or rather, isn't), this is
not a particularly original or progressive message, but simply a
moderate one.
Sadly, even though I see a dimension to the movie that most of the
gushing professional critics (that I've read so far) apparently do not,
this is in my view still not a movie that goes much beyond tedious
mediocrity. The story is too small, has too little to say and doesn't
add anything substantially new to the genre. It has all the typical
hallmarks of Danish movies, perhaps best exemplified by the sparse,
ill-at-ease and artificial dialogue which sounds completely unnatural.
Foreign audiences should be thankful that this is not apparent to them.
Denmark is a small country, and we are so deeply suffused with
Anglo-American culture that our own language is becoming unbearably
stilted, especially in scripted drama.
Having said this, one must applaud the effort to make a werewolf movie
in the first place, and while failing to arouse much excitement in this
viewer, it's not a complete failure. Perhaps this director's next movie
will be more interesting.
I rate "When Animals Dream" 6 stars out of 10, although parts of me
incline more towards 5.
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