The most Finnish film ever.
Heavy Trip (Finnish: Hevi Reissu) is a comedy film written and directed by Juuso Laatio and Jukka Vidgren, about an amateur extreme metal band hoping to get a good start to their career by playing in Norway's Northern Damnation Festival. The movie is a hearty Lampshade Hanging of Heavy Metal tropes (a la Metalocalypse and This is Spın̈al Tap), especially those applying to the Finnish and Scandinavian metal scene.
Heavy Trip was first released in Finland in 9 March 2018, followed by festival screenings in different parts of the globe starting from SXSW the very next day, garnering mixed to positive reception from audiences and critics alike and bagging quite a few awards over the course of the year.
A sequel, titled Heavier Trip is set for a release in 2024.
Heavy Tropes
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Defied by Kujanpää who thinks Turo, who looks like a punk, is unworthy of his daughter's affections, but he double-crosses this trying to hook his daughter up with Jouni.
- Battleaxe Nurse: Subverted. The head nurse of the psychiatric hospital in which Turo works is very strict and strong personality, but she has her heart in the right place, and is impressed on how Turo found heavy metal pacified Oula on his violent bouts.
- Bedlam House: Averted. The psychiatric hospital in which Turo works in isn't a Hospital Paradiso either, but at least the inmates seem to be treated nicely.
- Bedroom Adultery Scene: Miia surprises Jouni in flagrante delicto with another woman in his touring van.
- Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: Turo beating up a wolverine at the zoo after taking Oula's lion metaphor too literally.
- Blood Knight: Lampshaded by the Norwegian border patrol commander
- Blunt Metaphors Trauma: "We all have our lions to face." Turo deliberately faces a wolverine in the zoo the night after he hears this from Oula.
- The Casanova: Jouni, who was caught by Miia right in the middle of having it with another woman closer to his age in his own van.
- Turo once warned her father about Jouni being a player but the cop couldn't believe it.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Oula. His fast-gained proficiency with the drums made him this after Impaled Rektum lost Jynkky to a car crash.
- Covered in Gunge: Lotvonen unwittingly dumps an entire barrel of reindeer blood onto Frank.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Turo and Miia aren't exactly dating due to Kujanpää shipping her with Jouni, and even after Miia breaks up with Jouni, Kujanpää still treats Turo and his band like criminals. At least until the ending.
- Death Seeker: Jynkky
- Denser and Wackier: Compared to the contemporaneously released thriller Lords of Chaos, The Film of the Book of the same name about the Norwegian Black Metal scene that cemented part of the culture this very movie is based on.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Turo, natch.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Turo's long hair makes him a target for bullies misgendering him.
- Establishing Character Moment:
- Oula gets triggered by an unwitting Turo who just wants to make friends and leave him his linens. Violence ensues.
- Two girls go to the CD section of the library looking for pop music. Pasi casually lends them an Uruguayan grindcore CD instead.
- Jynkky eating a sandwich right before the band starts playing, and later collapsing to the floor with one foot still kicking the bass drum pedal as he chokes on his food.
Lotvonen: What, did he die again? - Everything Is an Instrument: Lotvonen sticks a knife into a reindeer carcass and absentmindedly jams the grinder. Noticing the sound, he calls up the band and subsequently bases his "Flooding Secrations" riff from there.
- Fingore: No gore, but, Lotvonen's father had long lost a middle and ring finger on one hand, leaving him perpetually signing the horns.
- Flyover Country: Lapland is pretty much like that.
- Garage Band: Impaled Rektum (at least before they got their name) are first seen jamming in Lotvonen's basement.
- Genre Mashup: Or as Pasi puts it, symphonic post-apocalyptic reindeer-grinding Christ-abusing extreme war pagan Fennoscandic-type Heavy Metal.
- Girl Next Door: Miia, a policeman's daughter who runs a flower shop just outside of town.
- Gratuitous English: The Norwegian festival promoter speaks to the Finnish band in English.
- Hair-Trigger Sound Effect: Reeling from Blunt Metaphors Trauma, we hear a lion's roar when Turo manages to accomplish something he's long feared doing, like asking Miia out on a date.
- Heavy Meta: The movie.
- Helicopter Parents: Kujanpää, who's quite the Troubled Sympathetic Bigot as he even forbade Miia to go to college in Oulu for fear of her hooking up with punks, which he thinks Turo is one of.
- Honest John's Dealership: Jouni's day job is a second hand car dealer.
- Hypocritical Humor: "I Put Black on Black Metal" on Oula's T-shirt
- Lotvonen's T-shirt "I Kill For Living". Technically true, as he is a butcher in his father's reindeer abattoir.
- When a Viking roleplayer asks Xytrax why he looks like a black metaller, and in turn he is asked why he's even wearing a Viking costume in the first place, by a tagalong friend who's himself actually dressed up as Legolas!
- I Call It "Vera": The Norwegian border patrol commander calls her beloved BFG "Angelo".
- Insane Equals Violent: Oula. Thankfully Turo lends him his Walkman, and subsequently Jynkky his drum kit, to avert most of the violence later on.
- Insistent Terminology: Pasi/Xytrax describes Rektum's style as symphonic post-apocalyptic reindeer-grinding Christ-abusing extreme war pagan Fennoscandic-type Heavy Metal. Get one word of that wrong and you'll have to answer to him.
- The Inspector Is Coming: Lotvonen's father is taken by surprise by the sight of a pickup truck, thinking the man who came to visit them will inspect the butchery. Turns out, the trucker was a passing festival promoter looking to buy some reindeer blood.
- Insufferable Genius: Pasi verges into this territory as originality-seeking Lotvonen tries many different guitar riffs, only for Pasi to mention the song it's been used in.
- Killed Off for Real: Jynkky, who died avoiding a passing reindeer after he hit the speed limit.
- Lampshade Hanging: Pasi loves to do this."Impaled Rektum. First gig, scandal, a lot of hate. Very good."
- LARP: Impaled Rektum meet a group of Viking LARPers after jumping off a fjord. One of them is confused about what kind of game they are meant to play and dresses up as Legolas instead.
- Lower-Class Lout: Averted. All band members have decent day jobs (Lotvonen as butcher, Turo as nurse in a psychiatric hospital, Pasi as librarian), they are well adjusted in the society, and loved by their parents.
- Meaningful Echo: "It's better to shit yourself than stay constipated." Notable that this was first uttered by a psychiatric hospital inmate.
- Metalhead: Turo, Lotvonen, Pasi, and Jynkky are textbook metalheads by fashion, but as characters, are four dimensions of this trope:
- Turo is a Nice Guy just wanting to be respected as such, but due to his looks and interests he's instead a target for bullies.
- Pasi is the Geek, taken up to eleven by his incredible memory of every metal song and album (and trope!) he has ever encountered. His fashion sense as Xytrax is Black Metal stage fashion with added horns for that rustic Finnish touch.
- Lotvonen is the artist searching for originality in his riffs, thanks to lots of bands in the metal scene sounding almost alike.
- Jynkky is the risk-taker, being the first to seize the opportunity to land a gig at the Northern Damnation festival the moment he realized it was right in front of him.
- Mistaken Identity: Once Impaled Rektum (including Jynkky in-casket and Oula!) have hit the road, Kujanpää invokes this trope through the radio, saying he's chasing fundamentalist terrorists headed to the Norwegian border. Another van filled with beer-happy men hsvinga bachelor party literally dressed as Arabs were taking the same road and even overtook Impaled Rektum, who then stopped their own van just to watch border patrol capture the other van and its passengers. Later on does border patrol catch the word from Kujanpää himself that these were NOT the ones he asked them to capture!
- My Car Hates Me: The dilapidated Death Van the band bought from Jouni gained its name thanks to a history of this trope.
- Norse by Norsewest: After getting cornered and jumping off a fjord, Impaled Rektum wash up on the shore right in front of a group of Viking roleplayers who ask what they're doing. Xytrax asks them for passage to the Northern Damnation festival, and everyone gets to ride a ship that leads to the backstage. Including Jynkky.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: The jerkwater town where the band is from.
- Rock Star Composer: Lauri Porra of Stratovarius fame did soundtrack work for the film.
- Precious Photo: This.
◊ - Refuge in Audacity: Using the speed camera to capture that Precious Photo of the band. Xytrax even asked for the photo right in the middle of Kujanpää reprimanding them in the bar.
- On a more audacious note, Turo asking Jouni if the latter left the keys in his touring van, and then making off with saidvehicle without an attempt to rush.
- Romantic False Lead: Jouni.
- Scary Black Man: Oula gets violent when triggered; otherwise he's a rather okay guy who just needs a better outlet for all that rage.
- Scenery Porn: The scenes of the Norwegian mountains and Atlantic coast
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Jynkky wants to go to the festival "even if I'm dead". No points for guessing how he ends up in the back half of the movie.
- Shout-Out: "We are on a mission of Satan!"
- Sinister Minister: The pastor who performs the last rites to Jynkky
- The Snack Is More Interesting: The movie poster depicts Jynkky with a burger in hand. In the beginning of the movie Jynkky eats before playing. After he dies for the last time Lotvonen even throws him the "Jynkky special" sans pickles.
- Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Pasi works at the library renting CDs and isn't really too happy about it. Not that we know.
- The Alleged Car: Death Van. Also Jynkky's Peugeot 205
- The Stoic: PASI. Not even falling off a fjord can make him react.
- Nearly veered into Not So Stoic when he heard Frank say Impaled Rektum's style wrong.
- Tempting Fate: That one guy who keeps calling Turo a homo gets kissed by Turo like it was no big deal.
- That Man Is Dead: Since taking the new name, Xytrax had to correct people who still called him Pasi, mentioning this trope verbatim. His employee ID was given the same treatment.
- Token Minority: Oula, who's from Lapland but is black. Lampshaded in full glory when he drums for the band in a top saying "I put the BLACK in Black Metal".
- Too Dumb to Live: Jynkky, in spades. Turo's Opening Narration says he'd already been declared dead twice before the movie, and then he dies twice again here.
- Took a Level in Badass: Turo, by stealing a wolverine his meal in Ranua Zoo. The place is real, and wolverines are extremely vicious predators.
- Trigger-Happy: The Norwegian Border Guards, but especially the Colonel.
- Undignified Death: Jynkky, who drives off the road into a roadside ditch trying to avert a reindeer on the road
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Turo is given this treatment every time his stage fright takes over.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: "I'm sorry, we don't have space for you in this year's festival." Later defied.
- You No Take Candle: "Yes. We are band."
Tropes applying to Impaled Rektum as a band:
- All Drummers Are Animals: Well, you have Jynkky who dives headfirst into everything including falling off a fjord, and this was AFTER he died!, and you have Oula whom the vocalist had to sedate just to sneak him out of a mental hospital.
- Appropriated Appellation: The name of the band itself came from Jouni insulting the band's music, saying they can shove it up their asses. Pasi then had an idea.
- Cover Version: "Kuusamo" takes its melodies after the song "Africa" by Albatros.
- Hair-Contrast Duo: Hair-contrast quartet. Dark-haired Turo and Pasi are quite laid-back compared to the more animated light-haired Lotvonen and Jynkky.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: EVERYONE. Except Oula.
- Metal Scream: Turo is shown capable of types 1, 2, and 3.note
- Myspeld Rökband / Xtreme Kool Letterz: Impaled Rektum. Pasi/Xytrax pronounced it as IM-pa-led before Frank the festival promoter pronounced it the English way.
- Older Than They Think: In-universe. Pasi, Lotvonen, Turo, and Jynkky had been jamming together for twelve years without a single public appearance or even a name up to the time frame of the movie. As Turo is said to be 25, it means they began playing when they were 13. Jynkky's headstone implies he was 24 when he died, so he was 12 at that time.
- Stage Names: Pasi, who renamed himself Xytrax (pronounced SIT-racks), lampshades this trope when asked why he sported a black metal look.
