PSALM 21

A young boy is being fed by his mother in the family kitchen. He watches bemused as she starts to convulse and her eyes turn black as she screams out his name in agony.

Years later, the boy has grown into a man: Henrik (Jonas Malmjos), a priest working in Stockholm who likes to give his congregation the odd laugh in order to get his point across.

A modern man of the cloth, Henrik refers to psalms from the Bible as "hits". He’s a divorcee who lives with pretty blonde Karolina (Julia Dufvenius), and struggles to maintain a relationship with his withdrawn son Jesper (Gabriel Krona) on the rare occasion that he has custody of him.

With so much already on his plate, he pays little credence to local old lady Elsie (Gunvor Ponten) who meets with him after one morning’s sermon claiming to be able to see dead souls everywhere.

Karolina has more time for Elsie’s ramblings though and becomes increasingly intrigued in her when she learns of Henrik’s recurring dreams. For the last fortnight he has been suffering the same nightmarish vision of how he witnessed his mother croaking before his eyes in the kitchen.

A few subliminally spooky goings-on later (a late-night road accident that appears to have never happened; a meeting with one of the most bizarre farm-based families imaginable, including a young girl who mutates into a ghoul, much to Henrik’s disbelief), and the young Holy man is very ill at ease indeed – but still can’t quite put his finger on the reason why.

Things start coming together when he learns over the telephone of a tragedy: his father, also a priest, has drowned in a remote Northern part of Sweden.

Plagued by evermore frequent visions of his mother in ghost-like form, Henrik is compelled to travel North and learn about his later father’s recent existence there.

As in all films of this ilk, travelling out of your comfort zone in search of the truth – especially when your dreams explicitly point towards a childhood trauma of some description – is never likely to bring about happy consequences.

Henrik is a rational man who subscribes to the contemporary Swedish church’s disbelief in such a thing as Christian Hell. His father, borne of a different era, had opposing ideals. Hmm ... guess which one got it right?

Sweden isn’t exactly known as a prolific provider of quality genre fare, with perhaps THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE and HOUR OF THE WOLF being their only truly noteworthy offerings of the 20th Century. But they’ve stepped up a gear or two in the last decade. THE CELLAR, DROWNING GHOST and INSANE all have their plus points. FROSTBITE was a welcome addition to the contemporary vampire canon, while LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is widely acknowledged as a modern classic.

PSALM 21 doesn’t quite satisfy as much as the latter two films mentioned above, but still entertains to a fair degree.

It starts off in great fashion, with a keen eye set on slow-building atmosphere. Good use of shade and score ensure that these early scenes are genuinely creepy. The précis is intriguing and Malmsjo’s performance teeters on just the right side of restrained intensity, affording him a degree of sympathy that viewers can latch on to.

Alas, as the plot finally gathers pace in the film’s second half, it takes a back seat as everything else is amplified: Malmsjo becomes fiercely concentrated in his increasingly over-the-top role, seriously running the risk at times of tipping events over into the realms of comedy; the ‘shock’ transformations of characters into ghostly images are old-hat (think of a thousand Asian horror flicks from the last fifteen years) and occur too frequently to attain any real impact.

To cap it all off, Hiller ends things on a religious note so heavily played that it’s more likely to provoke laughter than the thought he no doubt hoped for.

It’s a shame because what begins as a stylishly shot, brooding chiller descends into an overblown by-the-numbers horror show during the final forty minutes or so. That’s not to say PSALM 21 isn’t entertaining right up to its ludicrous finale, but it’s very much a film of two halves – and it hurts that the first half is so much more satisfying than what follows.

Revolver Entertainment’s DVD offers the film uncut in a 16x9 enhanced 2.35:1 ratio and looks good throughout. Despite images that err on the wrong side of soft, blacks are strong and colours are vivid without bleeding. The mannered visual style appears to be accurately represented.

Swedish audio comes in 2.0 and 5.1 surround options. I concentrated on the latter and it is an extremely healthy, evenly balanced mix. Optional English subtitles are well-written and easy to read.

An animated main menu page leads into a static scene-selection menu allowing access to the film via 12 chapters.

The only extra on the disc is a 4-minute featurette, self-explanatorily entitled "VFX Breakdowns". It shows the various stages of key FX sequences (lots of computer wizardry, basically).

PSALM 21 is a modestly enjoyable romp that comes undone somewhat in its latter stages, as it forsakes its promising build-up in favour of flashy FX and a heavy-handed finale which suggests Hiller really, really wants you to take his ideology on board.

The disc from Revolver is fairly basic but serves the film well in terms of audio and video playback.

By Stuart Willis