Welcome to Norway, Please Leave Your Logic at the Door
Every few years, a foreign horror film slips under the radar and promises to reinvent the genre — something bleak, stylish, and maybe even profound. Dark Souls (Mørke Sjeler) could have been that movie. It could have been Norway’s moody answer to Let the Right One In or 28 Days Later. Instead, it’s what happens when someone tries to remake The Walking Dead using IKEA instructions translated into three languages and then set on fire.
Written and directed by César Ducasse and Mathieu Péteul, Dark Souls is a film so confused it makes David Lynch look like a spreadsheet. It’s billed as a “horror-thriller,” but it’s mostly an endurance test in which everyone — actors, viewers, and probably the lighting crew — slowly loses the will to live.
The Opening: A Jog Gone Wrong
The movie opens with Johanna, a young woman jogging alone in the woods. Red flag number one. She’s promptly attacked by a masked man with a power drill — red flag number two, and also the only time the movie has a pulse. The killer drills her head (a subtle metaphor for what this movie will do to the audience) and leaves her for dead.
Except she’s not dead. Hours later, she strolls home like nothing happened, which is unsettling for her father, Morten, who gets a call from the police declaring her dead literally as she walks through the door. The film tries to make this shocking. It’s not. It’s just confusing.
Johanna then begins vomiting black goo and acting like a lobotomized Roomba, which the movie plays completely straight. She doesn’t eat, doesn’t speak, and somehow looks paler than Norwegian fish paste. Her father, being the kind of man who learned medicine from a YouTube comment section, decides that hospital treatment is “for quitters” and takes her home to “care for her himself.” Spoiler: he’s bad at it.
The Horror: Zombies, Drills, and Existential Dread (Mostly the Last One)
Meanwhile, more people get attacked by the same masked driller, and they also return as pale, vomiting, semi-conscious zombies. The police are baffled, which, to be fair, makes sense — so is the audience. There’s some vague talk of a conspiracy, tumors, and maybe something to do with oil drilling (get it? drilling?), but the plot is murkier than the stuff Johanna keeps puking up.
Instead of tension, the movie gives us long scenes of people staring, whispering, or wandering down hallways that look suspiciously like the same one shot from three angles. It’s like watching a Scandinavian funeral conducted by mannequins.
At one point, a doctor suggests brain surgery, but the dad refuses. Later, he drives around yelling at people, demanding answers, and occasionally punching them. By the time the “mystery” unfolds — something about corporate experiments, black goo, and metaphysical darkness — you’ve already checked out mentally and possibly physically.
The Performances: Zombies Have More Emotion
Let’s start with Morten Rudå, who plays Morten, the concerned father and, apparently, Norway’s most determined sad-sack. He spends the film in a constant state of sweaty panic, looking like a man who’s just realized his life insurance doesn’t cover zombie drilling. His emotional range oscillates between “mildly frustrated” and “existentially constipated.”
Johanna Gustavsson, as the titular half-dead daughter, does what she can — which isn’t much, since her main job is to stand still and occasionally projectile vomit tar. It’s less a performance and more a warning label for food poisoning.
The supporting cast fares no better. The police chief acts like he’s in a bad cop procedural, the doctors read their lines like they’re auditioning for a GPS voice, and the mysterious scientist might as well have “I’m the villain” tattooed on his forehead.
The only one having fun is the masked driller — who, despite being the villain, somehow radiates the most charisma. Maybe it’s the mask. Maybe it’s the power tool. Maybe it’s because he, unlike everyone else, gets to leave early.
The Tone: Bleak, Boring, and Accidentally Funny
It’s clear Ducasse and Péteul wanted to make a serious horror film. Dark Souls takes itself very seriously — the kind of grim self-importance that makes Lars von Trier look like he directs Scooby-Doo.
The cinematography is dark and grainy, every scene tinted with that “Nordic depression” palette of gray, gray, and slightly darker gray. The soundtrack hums ominously, as if trying to warn you that nothing will ever happen again.
But the real horror here isn’t supernatural — it’s pacing. Scenes stretch on forever, full of stilted dialogue and heavy breathing. When things finally do happen, they’re shot so awkwardly you’re not sure if it’s horror or slapstick. There’s one moment where Morten attacks a man in a parking lot that feels like two IKEA employees fighting over the last Allen wrench.
Even the violence lacks punch. Despite having a literal power drill as a murder weapon, the kills are so slow and antiseptic they feel like OSHA training videos. It’s a bad sign when you find yourself longing for Jason Voorhees to wander in and speed things up.
The “Mystery”: Sponsored by Confusion and Coffee
By act three, Morten starts unraveling the “truth.” Unfortunately, that truth is buried under so many layers of vague metaphor and poor editing that by the time it arrives, you’ve forgotten why anyone’s even dying.
Apparently, the black goo isn’t just goo — it’s evil. Or oil. Or possibly liquid despair. There’s talk of a company covering up drilling experiments gone wrong, leading to undead victims leaking darkness from their skulls.
It’s an intriguing concept, buried beneath a mountain of narrative sludge. You can almost sense the filmmakers’ ambition — a meditation on corruption, grief, and the contamination of the soul. But ambition without clarity just looks like a student film that got too philosophical after two espressos.
The Final Act: Please, Just End It
In the climax — if you can call it that — Morten confronts the masked driller and discovers he’s just another cog in a conspiracy. There’s a showdown, some drilling, a few more gallons of goo, and then… nothing. The film ends not with a bang, but with a confused whimper.
Johanna’s fate is ambiguous, Morten’s investigation leads nowhere, and the camera lingers on black sludge like it’s auditioning for a tar commercial. When the credits finally roll, you don’t feel scared or enlightened — just free.
The Aftermath: Existential Dread by Accident
In some ways, Dark Souls achieves what most horror films only dream of: it leaves you feeling hollow, drained, and deeply uncomfortable. Unfortunately, that’s not because of its scares — it’s because you’ve wasted 95 minutes watching people vomit ink and whisper about oil rights.
The film’s greatest twist? Realizing halfway through that “Mørke Sjeler” doesn’t mean “Dark Souls” as in evil spirits — it means bored audience members.
Final Thoughts: Drill, Baby, Drill
Dark Souls is the cinematic equivalent of being stuck in a Norwegian winter with no sunlight, no heat, and a neighbor who won’t stop explaining existential philosophy. It wants to be profound but lands squarely in pretentious. It wants to be scary but settles for sleepy.
If you’re into slow-burn horror, you might find something to admire in its bleak atmosphere. Everyone else will be tempted to grab a power drill — not to join the killer, but to escape the runtime.
Final Grade: D (for “Dreary, Drilled, and Dead Inside”)
You’ll come for the horror, stay for the black vomit, and leave questioning your life choices.
Tagline: “In Norway, no one can hear you yawn.”
