If you want to know what a less interesting and skillful Let the Right One In looks like, this is it. I don't really want to compare these two, but the similarities are much too obvious not to.

The main problem with this is that it lacks the subtlety, ambiguity and charm of the former. In When Animals Dream everything is very one sided. The plot, the characters, and their development. There are good guys, and there are bad guys. It's made very clear which are which and none deviate from their set path or seem to have a mind of their own. Not once are we allowed to decide who we want to side with. This is force fed…

Horror Hunt #30 (December 2020)
5. Neighboring country
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I should like this way more because it just really nails that melancholic kitchen sink realism that for whatever reason seem perfectly fit for a Scandinavian setting. Perhaps the most haunting aspect was how they perfectly captured the casual morbidity that appear when a family member falls ill. It is the real world without any flashy special effects, just the hopeless mediocrity of the common day.

So Marie is the depressed main character here, a hopeless teenager trapped in a Danish seaside town who has to juggle the traumas of a hostile workplace, a terminally ill mother and also, the evolving state of lycanthropy. It has been said before but it…

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025
FILM #28

Another werewolf movie that uses the werewolf transformation as a not-so-subtle metaphor for puberty, sexual awakening, and the transition to adulthood. Basically a sombre coming-of-age drama disguised as a creature feature, in the same vein as Ginger Snaps or Let the Right One In, but not nearly as accomplished as those two, lacking in depth and subtlety as well as mystery, horror and suspense. We've seen this story a thousand times before, and this one doesn't really do much to distinguish itself from others of its kind, playing out an overtly familiar plot without adding anything new. Når dyrene drømmer is a beautifully shot, atmospheric slow-burn horror drama that relies on mood and…

There is something about the Scandinavian scenery that just makes it perfect for horror, and When Animals Dream utilises its setting's natural eerieness to great effect.

Taking its visual cues from modern Scandi-noir, and filtering its horror through the existential lens of Bergman and the coming of age feel of Let the Right One In, Jonas Alexander Arnby's film is a low-key somber werewolf tale.

Young Marie is becoming aware of her sexuality, and is also developing a rash accompanied by thick, dark hair. This appears to have some link with her mother's (Sonia Richter) debilitating, paralysing illness. Above this, there seems to be some unspoken collusion between her father (Lars Mikkelson) and the family doctor.

It is a sweet…

SOS, she's in Disguise
SOS, she's in Disguise
There's a She-Wolf in Disguise
Coming out, coming out, coming out

"Ich verwandle mich gerade in ein Monster und muss sehen das ich vorher... möglichst viel Sex kriege. Kannst du mir dabei helfen?"

"When Animals Dream" reiht sich nun in eine geschlossene Gesellschaft, bestehend aus "Raw", "Ginger Snaps" und "Let the right One in" ein, die sich mit dem Thema der animalischen Verwandlung im noch recht jungen Alter etwas anders auseinandersetzt...

Jonas Alexander Arnby schuf 2014 ein kleines, leises, dänisches Stück Coming-of-Age-Horror, das einem mit seiner speziellen Bearbeitung des Themas schon gerne mal das Blut in den Adern gefrieren lassen kann.
Ein Film, der vor allem durch seine extrem kühle Atmosphäre und…