A teenage girl’s awakening sexuality quite literally brings out the beast in her in When Animals Dream, an atmospheric fantasy chiller that marks an accomplished Cannes debut from Danish director Jonas Alexander Arnby.
This is a tremendous feature debut, haunting and elegaic, while not shying away from violence and sex.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2014
When Animals Dream 2014
Når dyrene drømmer
“Something is definitely rotten in
small-town Denmark in this crisp little
thriller about a shy teenage girl getting
in touch with her inner werewolf.
Competing in the Critics’ Week section
at Cannes, Jonas Alexander Arnby’s
debut feature is a confident and goodlooking
work that owes more to the
Nordic noir gloom of Let The Right
One In than to the sanitized fluff of
Twilight or the comic-book carnage
of the Underworld franchise… Screen
newcomer Sonia Suhl has a great face
for the heroine, pale and haunted
and otherworldly, like a flesh-andblood
remake of Munch’s The Scream.
Suhl stars as Marie, a timid teenage
outsider living in a tiny fishing village
on Denmark’s remote northern coast
with her overprotective father (Lars
Mikkelson, brother of Mads) and
wheelchair-bound, heavily sedated
mother (Sonja Richter). But when she
takes a job at the local fish processing
plant, Marie comes to realize that her
family is harboring secrets that make
her co-workers jumpy and hostile. And
what are those strange patches of hair
sprouting on her chest?” — Stephen
Dalton, Hollywood Reporter