Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Engaging thriller that follows a strict path. Like so many thrillers, this film has a lot to sort out. There are relationships to develop, a character to move from point A to point B, and twists and turns. Scorupco returns to her home town after an old flame is found murdered and her best friend is the prime suspect. The film takes on religion as its main adversary. The victim was a preacher that made millions for the church. We see a close-knit community wanting to keep things simple. No one's to be trusted. The films succeeds in offering a finale that causes you to question the final actions of individual characters. The film has some gorgeous landscapes that it explores. The ice, the snow, the northern lights. All this is captured and creates a cold, isolated, but hypnotic atmosphere. It's a wonderful ending, but the journey there was so generic, it's impossible to rate it any higher.

A beautiful-looking film set in an icy Scandinavian backwater, where most of the men are evil, or weak, and most of the women are good (as in a lot of contemporary Swedish drama.) The lead character (Izabela Scorupco) is a beautiful young tax lawyer, determined to protect her best friend, who's been accused of murder. Scorupco faces the usual steely-eyed religious bigots, and has to untangle familiar murky secrets, but the plot has some good twists, which are parcelled out in a well paced and-structured way. Ms Scorupco is a bit one note, but she's competent. More interesting is the local detective..she's like someone you might meet in a small town, heavily pregnant, and quietly pragmatic. The solution to most of these murder mysteries seems to be always slightly depressing - destruction seems to be the only recourse of those who try to end their own or someone else's misery. You can't make fritatas without breaking eggs, I suppose.

This movie may lack somewhat in how it's performed, but it didn't bother me much. The high vote is for its plot, and now I want to read the book after seeing the movie. What the book may not have though, is the beautiful scenery of northern Sweden.This is a movie about good and bad. If you think good and bad is difficult before you see the movie, you will hopefully think it is even more difficult after seeing it. If you on the other hand believe that things can only be either good or bad, you will probably not like this movie.The religious stuff in the movie is pretty far out, and very clear on that point, so I don't think "ordinary" religious people will feel offended by its (mostly) negative portrayal.

I was looking forward to seeing this, mostly because I have frequently visited Kiruna, where it was shot, the past few years. Technically there is a solid craftsmanship at work here, the photography is nice and so forth. Still, where it is lacking is in the scriptwriting and directing departments. The storytelling is unfocused, confused and sometimes just plain sloppy. Crucial information is conveyed by jarring use of voice-overs, where it just as easily could have been worked into the dialog. The backstory of the congregation and the charismatic leader is not properly setup and explained, and thus never becomes believable. I get a sense of post-production tinkering, along the lines of "oh, we should explain this or that because we forgot (could't afford) to shoot it...etc". The use of fast cross-cutting between dramatic events, flashbacks etc, is irritating and oftentimes deprives scenes of dramatic potential (possible spoiler: the incident with the dog, for example). Despite the best of intentions, this emerges as a fairly mediocre movie. I have not read the book on which it is based, and if this is anything to go by, I probably will not bother. Isabella does the best she can with the thin material, as well as most of the other actors. All in all, the scriptwriter and director is to blame here.