Final Rating: 4.5/5
Composer Hettarher’s spare, moody music opens the tale with ominous tones, which swath a rugged seaside draped in near-darkness – pink streaks striking through the sky the only relief. Consider the mood sufficiently set for No Rest For the Wicked, Kasper Kalle’s Gothic Northern European romance, playing at Fantasia Festival.
Unfolding on an isolated corner of the Faroe Islands in 1862, the film centers on a young fisherman named Baldur, played by Faroese native son turned top model Egor Venned in his acting debut. The story opens with glimpses of an austere life set to the heartbeat of traditional Christianity, infused with a warm glow of easy affection between mother and son and camaraderie with fellow fishermen and the other people of the village. Quiet beginnings humming with moody mundanity.
Enter: a stranger, stranded, in need of rescue. Only, Baldur’s efforts go against the will of the sea, and it is ultimately our hero who is rescued right back. This double-life-saving meet-cute brings our duo into immediate intimate proximity, where the chemistry sizzles from the first touch.
The interloper is a Danish whaler named Helge (Pilou Asbæk, Game of Thrones, Ghost in the Shell). His touch, his way of life, open new possibilities for sheltered Baldur, whose private moments are increasingly consumed by secret smiles – at first to the delight, then to the disappointment of his mother Ásla, played by Sofia Nolsøe, a theater actor with the uncanny ability to morph her face from lively beauty to a wisened cruelness as her worries for her son wax and wane.
Director of Photography Jacob Møller uses his lens to paint intimate portraits of each of their faces, the close quarters of their evening escapes in stark contrast to the Romantic mountainscapes that would have inspired new heights of Byronic poetry were its isolation not so complete. Clouds of mist thicken over the water in undulating waves whose salt tinges you can almost smell. Period-perfect sets by Louise Bruun and costumes by Louize Nissen finish the total immersion.
An adaptation of the 1884 short story “Manor” by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, one of the first European stories written to unapologetically celebrate gay love, the 103-minute tale confronts tragedy with supernatural symbolism. Billed as a vampire story, viewers should anticipate something less akin to the queer antics of The Vampire Lestat than to the slow-build friendship of Let the Right One In. Though the passion is palpable, even when it turns into literal possession.
Baldur, we learn, is so separated from the world that he has never even touched a tree – the Faroe Islands are dependent on driftwood to craft all of their needs. For director Kalle, the isolation of the location spoke to him, which he says traces back to the shared pain of being queer in a world that continues to insist such natural urges are wrong – “a pain rooted in a deep loneliness and the constant fear of being found out, of being cast out.” This, he says, dovetails naturally with horror storytelling: “for queer people who grew up hiding who they were, horror speaks the language of their anxiety and shame.” (This is why Helge, for his own good, cannot linger, was always just passing through.)
And when the older fishermen of the village flirt with the idea of leading a life as unmoored as the interloping Dane, for a moment the suppression of these desires is recognized as universal. Queer or not, the film speaks to the part of everyone that has longed for something they could not have, or felt trapped by others’ expectations.
The characters themselves are over-guided by fear, but they are not caricatures of cruelty: their initial welcome to Helge is warm, laughter shared as they trade knot-tying techniques. Nor does Ásla’s unease conform to stereotypes, remaining as nuanced as her reality that juggles religious expectation with her love for her son and her own needs in between.
But the quiet chemistry at the core is what drives this compelling story – intense, intimate, undeniable. It lulls you into the quickening rhythm of their romance. And, when the final lean, melancholic chords of the diegetic folk singing wail, the images that accompany them leave your heart bursting with aching hope and satisfying sadness.
Congratulations to Kasper Kalle and Pilou Asbæk for their Best Director and Best Performance wins at the festival!
No Rest For The Wicked was seen during the 2026 Fantasia Festival. Thank you to Obscured Pictures and Charades for the screener.
