There's Something in the Barn

Une comédie familiale de Noël avec quelques éléments de film d’horreur. Vous connaissez le genre : la musique est effrayante et les choses sont sur le point de mal tourner, mais la scène est entrecoupée de blagues et il est clair qu’il n’arrivera rien à personne. Et l’humour est plus celui d’un Chris Columbus énervé que d’un Tommy Wirkola, qui aurait pu faire de ce film une véritable comédie à l’humour noir. Magnus Martens se contente d’exploiter des clichés familiers pour le grand public, qui en sera très probablement satisfait – le film est parfaitement réalisé, les acteurs sont sympathiques, l’intrigue avance et il y a beaucoup d’action. Et ce que j’ai moi-même apprécié, ce sont les blagues pertinentes sur la différence entre la culture américaine (tirer) et la culture norvégienne (boire). [Festival du film de Sitges] (08/10/2023)

There’s Something in the Barn is much more a comedy than a horror movie. As a comedy, it’s a solid film featuring a privileged and ignorant American family that moves to snow-covered Norway before Christmas with the naïve idea that they will take selfies there and watch the aurora borealis every evening. They are kept company by the peculiar local characters, while the film satirically makes fun of the stereotypes of both nations. Nevertheless, it is disappointing as a horror movie in that it starts out by whetting the viewer’s appetite for a bloodily coarse spectacle along the lines of Krampus or Violent Night  (and yes, it achieves that a few times), but in comparison with those films, it is generally lame and even almost like a family movie. For any proper action, we have to wait until the final third, which is solidly packed with such action, but logic and the previously established rules rather go by the wayside. This will probably not become a Christmas classic because the loud and silly protagonists, depicted in a derisively unsympathetic light, rather make us want to root for their peace- and order-loving antagonists. (08/10/2023)

This new Christmas horror film from the Norwegians would like to become the sibling of Wirkola's Dead Snow, but it is miles away; unfortunately there is nothing interesting to see here. A family moves to a mountain cottage in Norway before Christmas. There is a goblin elf hiding in the barn, he likes his peace and strict rules must be followed to not piss him off, which of course fails. During the first 50 minutes almost nothing interesting happens, the family is unlikeable, except for the sexy step mom, she was nice, but the father was a terrible loser and the kids were uninteresting. Once the elf gets pissed off and an army of elves appears, there is some action, but it's boring. We don't get any decent gore, it's a light/soft horror film for children. The humor doesn't work, overall it's quite bland and uninteresting, where no element stands out in anything. Visually, it's not completely bad, but if I went to see it in the cinema, I'd leave even more pissed off. It may serve well as a background while baking cookies or unwrapping gifts at Christmas, otherwise it's a waste of time. 4/10. (12/12/2023)