Canada and Iceland have teamed up to combine their cinematic powers to create a new thriller about a deceased grandmother, a housing market boon and an inheritance. Maya, played by Brittany Bristow, is out for a jog in Toronto when she gets a call from her mother saying her maternal grandmother who lives in Reykjavík, has passed away. What would normally be tragic news, ends up causing a whole lot more questions as Maya’s mother had told her that her grandmother died years ago. So instead of sadness, it is more shock and confusion. Maya has also inherited her grandmother’s house so she must head to Iceland to sort through the mess and sign off on the paperwork to sell the property. Right away she is met with a very pushy real estate agent who is determined to get her to sign off on the sale papers without reading them, but Maya is more concerned with learning who her grandmother was then putting her name on the dotted line. From there she starts to meet people in the neighbourhood who are offering their services to help the overwhelmed Maya, but their intentions aren’t known or understood.
The film is done in a style similar to such titles as Insomnia and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, in the sense that they invoke a Nordic omnipresent dark and cold attitude. Maya arrives wanting to talk to people, but instead is met with cold indifference from everyone. The movie doesn’t have the techno thriller aspect of Tattoo or the horror in plain daylight of Insomnia, but it still feels like it was inspired by movies similar to them.
Maya is treated like a gaslit victim right from the start. When she hears noises in her grandmother’s house and questions the real estate agent, he dismisses her fears as illegitimate noting that he only received one pair of keys from the police so why would she even raise such a question. She has a chance encounter with a man named Pétur played by Kolbeinn Arnbjörnsson, who is hit by a car while on his bicycle and after she tends to his injury they strike up a friendship that turns romantic. Pétur scoffs at the notion that Maya may be being watched by her neighbours, chalking it up to coincidences and paranoia. The only person who seems to take Maya seriously is Soley, played by Ingamaría Eyjólfsdóttir, a server at a local cafe who also happened to be the woman who found Maya’s grandmother’s body and reported it to the police.
While the film has ideas of grandeur about being a psychological thriller that is about uncovering dark family secrets and a looming real estate agent who is trying far harder than need be to get the client to sell, it mostly is just a little too much slow burn. A lot of the film relies on chance encounters, how is it that Maya goes to meet the real estate agent at a cafe and overhears a server making a snide comment under her breath that turns out to be the person who found the body, or how does Maya see a man get hit while riding his bike only for him to turn out to be involved in some sort of scheme. The great character actor John Rhys-Davies (best known as Gimli from the Lord of the Rings films) shows up lurking in shadows and peering out of windows periodically for the first hour of the film until he finally gets up the courage to deliver a message to Maya as he gets one scene to tell some back story exposition.
The film also lacks any real thrills, as the audience is geared up too often for a big scare moment or of violence, only to be let down over and over again and by the time it finally does happen, the interest has waned. The family secrets that are revealed aren’t nearly as shocking or reverberating as say the truth about Harriet Vanger in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The end revelation ends up being so mundane you end up asking yourself if this was really the whole point of the film and wonder if there is more coming.
All the Icelandic actors do a great job performing in English, with the standouts being Ingamaría Eyjólfsdóttir, the local server who ends up being the biggest assistance to Maya in finding out the truth, helping her translate old articles and letters and Kolbeinn Arnbjörnsson the romantic partner of Maya who you can tell something is off about him right away, but is able to charm his way out of any questions Maya might have.
Shadowtown was seen during the 2021 Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival. Thank you to the festival for the press pass. Shadowtown currently has no wide North American release date.
