An unhappy couple, actress Lisa (Noomi Rapace) and her director husband Lars (Aksel Hennie), go to their cabin in the woods with a view to kill each other. However, once there, events spiral out of their control.
A Norwegian Netflix movie that premiered in November 2021.
Major spoilers follow. As the film depends heavily on twists and reveals for its impact, spoilers are unavoidable. If you want to keep your surprise, watch the film first, then come back here. You Have Been Warned.
Tropes:
- Awful Wedded Life: Lisa and Lars were planning to kill each other and can't stop arguing even when they're in mortal danger.
- Bad Actor, Good Liar: Lars calls Lisa a terrible actress and she apparently failed to get away even from a traffic ticket due to her lies being unconvincing. She still manages to play the trio of criminals to do all her whims before they realise what's going on.
- Big Damn Heroes: Lars father escapes his care home to see what's up in the cabin. Once there, he effortlessly takes the situation under control and subdues remaining convicts. While it doesn't last, the commotion and his initial success is more than enough to sway the hopeless situation.
- Black Comedy: A couple decides to solve their marital issues by murdering each other. Hilarity Ensues.
- Blood Knight: Lars' father is actually glad he goes out in the blaze of glory.
- Creator Couple: In-universe and somewhat downplayed - while they don't work together, Lars is a director and Lisa is an actress.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Petter ends up with his arm minced by a propeller screw, then a bag of stones is put on his neck and drags him overboard and to the bottom of the fjord.
- Dead Sparks: The marriage between Lars and Lisa is going so bad, they are both planning to just murder the other during the weekend trip and collect the insurance.
- Depraved Homosexual: Dave is implied to be serving time for rape, while in the same time happens to be a homosexual. He's this close from raping Lars over a pool table and takes great pleasure, even laughing, just from the fact how scared and broken Lars ended up being due to it.
- Dumb Blonde: Roy is an idiot, to put it mildly. Meanwhile Lisa exploits the perception against the gang in the cabin.
- Dumb Muscle: Both Victor, a caretaker Lars hired as an accomplice, and especially Roy, the neo-nazi escaped prisoner, are dummies that are mostly useful due to their strength. While it's implied Victor has some disorder, Roy is a straight-out moron.
- Everybody Loves Blondes: Lisa dyed her hair blonde in an effort to get more roles.
- Foreshadowing: By a handful
- Lisa's friend wishes Lars good hunting, confusing him. As part as her alibi, Lisa described their weekend trip as going hunting.
- The cabin's alarm doesn't work. Roy smashed it with a rock a day prior.
- Lars steps on cornflakes in the kitchen, clearly confused about the mess. Roy made it when raiding the kitchen.
- Lars can't find his favourite sweater, the one he always wears when working in the cabin. That's because Dave is wearing it instead of his prison uniform.
- Lars is squeamish about touching raw meat. He hired Victor to "carve up" Lisa after she's dead and make disposing of the body easier.
- Gag Penis: He's not called "Horse-Cock" Dave without a reason.
- Greed:
- Both Lars and Lisa want to collect the others insurance after the murder. In case of Lars, he has to also pay off Victor, which quickly escalates into an additional conflict.
- Lisa managed to negotiate hers and Lars' safety by offering the three convicts money she has supposedly stashed in her bank account.
- Hunting "Accident": Lisa's plan for the weekend.
- Informed Ability: Inverted. We are told repetitively that Lisa is a two-bit actress and one bad enough she can't even talk her way out of a speeding ticket. She still managed to play the trio of criminals like fiddles, without any of them ever knowing better.
- Karma Houdini: Victor's death is being put on the tab of the escaped convicts, leaving Lars free of any charges.
- Knee Capping: Lars' father knee-caps Dave with a shotgun, despite Dave using Lisa as a hostage. When Dave finally drags his way inside and bandages his completely busted knee, Lars shows up and stomps on the knee, breaking it inwards.
- Let No Crisis Go to Waste: In the end, Lars and Lisa realise they can still pay their debts and get away with killing Victor. They heavily sensationalise their case, make bunch of appearances in talk shows, write a book and keep the topic hot for long enough to get a movie adaptation out of their mis-adventures, directed by Lars and with Lisa playing herself.
- Made of Iron: Roy takes just absurd level of abuse before being finally killed, while almost constantly having upper hand on due of Lars and Lisa.
- Mood Whiplash: It's for the most part silly Black Comedy... and then there is Lisa being threatened with rape and Lars almost taken by force, which instantly kills any semblance of comedy.
- Nice Mean And In Between: Dave, Petter and Roy. Keep in mind that Dave is a rapist homosexual and Roy a dumb neo-nazi and yet they both combined aren't anywhere near as evil or hurtful as Petter.
- Retired Badass: Lars father is currently living in a care home, but used to be a soldier and then part of Norwegian resistance during WW2. Now he's a resentful old man that wishes he died back then, in the glory of combat, rather than needing a pair of crutches to even walk.
- Running Gag: A card saying "X days prior" when showing some crucial event or past development. It eventually deals with fractions, too.
- The Sociopath: Petter has infamous criminal reputation as someone that even killed his partners from a heist. When prodded about it, he explains that all men have their value and once that value is reduced to zero, there is no point keeping them around. Within the frame of story, he abandons the knee-capped Dave, for he has "no value now". If all of this wasn't enough, he's a brutal killer that sees nothing wrong with getting rid of people standing on his way.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The "death by lawn mower". While Lars' father ends up badly injured, it didn't actually kill him and the engine quickly stopped on his clothes. It's the impaling knife wound he received prior that makes him bleed out and die.
- Take That Us/Ascended Meme: In the end, when Lars is directing a film adaptation of their exploits, his part is played by a black actor. It's a joke on the "Netflix adaptation" meme, where color-blind casting is a norm - and this movie was made by Netflix.
- Tap on the Head: All the time. Lars gets electrocuted with a taser, Lisa gets knocked out by a gun not once but twice, and they both get knocked out cold by the falling roof.
- Til Murder Do Us Part: A mutual version. Lars and Lisa are both planning to kill each other to get money and end their marriage.
- Toilet Humor: Roy gets diarrhea after eating wild berries and ends up taking a dump in the attic, much to displeasure of Petter and Dave. Then the shit falls on Peter's face in the finale, making him even more pissed.
