User Reviews

Three lousy stories that has nothing to do with each other at all. First is a Zombie-kind of work. Not as bad as the rest, but still, not worth watching. Next up is a piece about people being haunted by memories. But don't get fooled. It's not a haunting story, just a even worse piece of work. And to salute these three piles of sh*t we get to spend 20 minutes in a blur. At least we didn't understand this part at all.

To sum it up, not a inch of scariness, just plain boredom. I understand that I should have read the signs of warning in an earlier state. It's a Swedish horror film, that's not a good sign. Sweden can manage some good crime movies, but the horror genre is not their cup of tea. Second sign, it's marked as a "video".

Last night I watched Syner, a Swedish movie by director/screenwriter Nikolaj Marquez von Hage, and I must admit that it made a big impression on me. I am not saying that I liked everything with this movie but, when you see an original and creative movie like this, you must (at least I do) like it on some level. Actually, this is the sort of movie that you don't see too often, a movie that is hard to categorize (even though it probably belongs to the horror genre). The film consists of three separate stories vaguely united by certain scenes in which an author creates them on his typewriter. The stories are also combined by a common theme, as they take place in the wasteland between reality and fantasy. In this respect a proper genre classification maybe would be "gothic", or why not "Swedish Gothic", as the capital of Sweden and the Swedish countryside with its picturesque red houses and forests plays a central part. The first story revolves around a young woman who one day finds herself trapped in her apartment by Zombie-like creatures. This is of course something we have seen before, but what stands out from the typical George A. Romero movie are the small, nuanced scenes like for example the scene with the kids (which I won't reveal here), scenes which adds another dimension to the storytelling and the meaning of it all. The second story is about a man who enters into another zone where he meets different people who, like himself, are burdened by a guilty conscience. This episode reminded me about Stalker by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky with its setting in the Swedish countryside and in abandoned, post apocalyptic factories. The third and last installment is probably my favorite and is based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. A man at a café one day notices a man on the street that he feels a strange urge to follow. This simple story is without any dialogue, but it is cleverly told by awesome editing and cinematography. There is a simplicity to this story which I can't but help to love and it makes a good finale to the other two parts with its visually storytelling and poetic, paranoid view of the city and its inhabitants. The best parts of Syner are unquestionably the cinematography and the editing together with an original script that mixes traditional horror elements with details that feels more personal and artistic. The weaker parts are definitely the dialogue driven scenes together with the performance of certain actors. This is by no means a perfect film where every part is nicely fit together in a balanced, harmonious way. This is a movie that searches after something new, a movie that questions the idea of genres and don't respect all the cinematic conventions. It's a movie with a vision, something that is probably its weakness at the same time as its strength.