Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

As Good As It Gets

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

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

A 30-something man wakes up in agony with blood in his hands and clothes, only to get up and carry on ahead through his day at break-neck speed, ignoring all signs of disaster. A fever-pitch intensity follows that escalates into claustrophobic desperation within a first-person-perspective: what the hell has occurred?! OK, imagine the worst possible personal tragedy occurring the night before to a character like that... well, I give you 2 guesses! In all fairness to filmmaker Jesper Ganslandt, but the scenario of what has happened in this Swedish thriller-drama is to me VERY obvious after 15 minutes. What is NOT obvious, though, are the surfacing, immediate reactions and actions of a person's mind after such a tragedy. And that turns this into a highly realistic, quite spellbinding state of shock for 80 minutes. The case-solving itself is not relevant, and for that reason, the greatest asset is a terrific and highly credible performance by Olle Sarri in the lead. He dissolves bit by bit in front of us through his 24-hour ordeal, like a modern-day Raskolnikov, but without the philosophical aftermath. So, we have indeed a thriller - but also a psychological drama.And there is my main quibble: with a story (and an ending) like this, writer-director Ganslandt also leaves out all surrounding details like backgrounds, bonds, motives, etc. It cries for a social commentary context and an epilogue. I know its enclosed format certainly makes material for tons of discussions, but it leaves me a bit wanting.All in all, quite impressive and a needful change of pace for the more poetic "Farväl Falkenberg"-filmmaker! 6/10 from Ozjeppe.

I put on this movie without having read a single word about it, something that helped elevate "Apan" over almost everything I've seen so far this year. I never saw Jesper Ganslandts debut "Farväl Falkenberg" either, so I did not know anything about this up and coming swedes intentions with getting in to the movie business until yesterday. What he has accomplished with "Apan" is capturing the main character Kristers, Played by Swedish actor Olle Sarri, total nervous breakdown. You can feel the tone set by Ganslandt from the very first frame, and that's only the start of a descent towards the absolute darkest depths of the mind acted out with perfection by Olle Sarri.If I were to compare what I experienced with this film to something else, the closest work would be Gaspar Noés "Enter The Void", in how the audience gets forced in to a character by means of filming and lack of added sounds and music. 20 minutes in, I felt the emotions portrayed by Olle Sarri, and how his decisions actually mattered to me. You become the broken individual on screen.If you are interested in seeing a fantastically well perceived narrative of a broken mans broken life, this is for you. If you are susceptible to this kind of film, you will feel as empty and broken as the subject of this portrayal when you're done.

A man wakes up in a bathroom. He seems disoriented and is covered in blood. He tries to pull himself together the best he can; he washes off the blood, he leaves the house, and carries on with his day. He goes to work, he goes shopping, he goes to work and he visits his mother. Meanwhile, he is ostensibly confused, afraid, in pain and full of anxiety.Jesper Ganslandt's puzzling drama about an unknown man's odyssey is an uncompromisingly dark character study and one of the most unsettling Swedish films of the decade, at least. The intrusive and somewhat naturalistic direction, with a shaky, hand-held camera following the man from only a few feet's distance, creates a very unsettling feeling; it places the viewer right next to a person who could break down at any minute. This feeling is enhanced by the performance of the brilliantly casted Olle Sarri. Apart from being an excellent performance in itself, Sarri is mostly known for his role in a Swedish sitcom which creates a disturbing contrast to the character he plays here.If I said that the viewer gets very close to the main character physically, we are certainly not invited into his mind. First of all, we are given very little information throughout the film about what has actually happened to the man. There is very little dialogue in the film, and much of it consists of hearing the main character talk on the phone. We only get to hear his side of the conversation, and he mostly says phrases like "yes" and "I will", which hardly leaves the audience with many clues. The few conversations that take place in person are either completely insignificant, or works on a symbolical level, such as the brilliant scene where a boy tells him about a dream he had, or when his mother is describing a painting she made – the former captures the recurring theme about alienation, whereas the latter suggests, and serves as a metaphor for, the man's possible assault on his son.When the film is over, we hardly know more than we did from the start; at best, the things that we guessed from the start seem to have been true, if still far from obvious. This might leave some viewers frustrated or feeling robbed, but in a film that has constantly been designed to allow the audience to fill in the blanks, and as a closure to a brief and enigmatic glimpse of an unstable man's life, it fits perfectly.

I was in a mood for a weird movie when I went to see this one. What really disappointed me is that it's mostly just very realistic and slightly depressing.Very little happens in the movie. It could have ended after 40 minutes and it wouldn't have changed the totality much at all. It wasn't exactly bad in the way that you get angry because it's stupid or anything like that but there really isn't any sense of a story unfolding.I think it's a film that it OK to have seen but I didn't enjoy the experience very much. Don't watch it unless you want to see something made by film people for film people.