Flasz On Film

Between Gremlins, Krampus, Rare Exports, Violent Night and others, not to mention the slasher space occupied by Black Christmas, Christmas Evil and the Silent Night, Deadly Night family of weirdly self-cannibalistic knockoffs, the landscape of holiday-themed horrors is undoubtedly quite crowded. Therefore, it should probably come as no surprise that elbowing out enough room to introduce a modicum of originality, or at least freshness, in this space is also hard to come by. But it’s never a bad idea to try and find a niche within this familiar setting.  

There’s Something in the Barn is one such attempt that tries to manufacture some much-needed breathing space in the crowded room of Christmas horrors by breaking a window and letting in some fresh air… before realizing the window in question was connecting the room to an adjacent chamber filled with more Christmas-adjacent movies. But that’s not necessarily bad, at least in principle.  

The movie, directed by Magnus Martens (who is coming back home to Norway to helm this movie having been involved with a number of TV productions) is perhaps trying to find a useable living space somewhere between Gremlins and a fish-out-of-water story about Americans abroad (think Griswolds tempered by the current zeitgeist), peppered liberally with elements of the Nordic folklore. We meet the Nordheims, a typical modern American family (Martin Starr, Amrita Acharia, Zoe Winther-Hansen, and Townes Bunner) who have just made the biggest decision of their lives to move to Norway, where they have inherited a farm.  

Therefore, what happens to them is a medley of familiar fish-out-of-water shenanigans including initial hostility of the locals to Yankee intruders, awkward attempts at integration, cultural jokes and the like. However, on top of what anyone would clearly see as enough to make a comedy of errors about Americans moving to Norway and having to deal with the cultural shock of doing so, the Nordheims find that – as the title suggests – there’s something in the barn. And this something in their barn is a barn elf (Kiran Shah) – a mythical creature who takes care of the farm when you’re not looking and makes sure your work is done while you’re asleep… under the proviso of being respected and taken care of as well. You see, Nordic elves are not your typical fairytale folk. They’re hardened dwarves with beards and wrinkles, and they can be cantankerous. Especially if you mess with them. Which is what the Nordheims intend to do because they think of turning their barn into an AirBnB… right after throwing a house-warming party in it, which inevitably draws the ire of the resident barn elf, who summons friends to rid the farm of the human infestations with axes, pitchforks, and good old fashioned barefaced violence.  

So, you see that there’s something in There’s Something in the Barn. Principally, it is a commendable attempt at tapping into cultural streams you and I might find incredibly familiar, all the while refreshing them with a zesty note of the Nordic touch brought into the conversation by the film’s Norwegian creators. In a way, you could probably expect a movie like this to position itself as a refreshing specimen within the crowd of recent horror movies, as it works at the interface between a home invasion horror, a dark fairy tale, a Christmas slasher and a fish-out-of-water comedy for the whole family. Problem is that all these ingredients, intriguing as they might be, don’t quite emulsify very well. It turns out that it’s not enough if there’s something in There’s Something in the Barn, because there’s something missing from that something. And the thing missing from that something in There’s Something in the Barn (you must know I’m doing this on purpose, by the way), is directorial confidence and the willingness to go places. Not to the barn. But places.  

It just goes to show that you can get all your ducks lined up and have a nearly perfect recipe for a formidable piece of entertainment with a holiday slant, and you can still fail miserably if the chef doing the figurative cooking lacks the confidence to season everything aggressively enough and to imbue the entire project with a distinctive flavour profile. Such is the fate of There’s Something in the Barn which on one hand overcompensates a lot while equally it fails to press the pedal to the metal and take the movie into overdrive.  

Now, at this point I should apologize for – as it seems to be my modus operandi – I having once again inadvertently chosen to mix and match my metaphors and similes to create a concoction that marries culinary with car-related universes, but that’s just how I operate. In contrast to Magnus Martens, I’d rather take a leap of faith and commit to doing something potentially terminally stupid, hoping it would land or at least in some way that it would escape the confines of convention.  

Martens’ movie just doesn’t do that. It happily coasts for most of its running time, presumably trying to appeal to everyone. Its humour is a bit tame and inoffensive, its characterizations safely predictable, and it all takes a bit too long to unfold and go off the rails. And even when it does, the movie never takes enough risks to distinguish itself. It’s a home invasion movie with very little stakes where the characters are never truly in danger and whatever happens to them is always superficial and easily glossed over. I don’t necessarily expect There’s Something in the Barn to veer into the realm of Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead (or even the newest addition to the series Evil Dead Rise) and put this inoffensive family of walking and talking Hollywood tropes through the wringer, but I think it would have been nice to feel that the Nordheims were in peril at some point. Even when they technically were, it never came across as such. Which is a real shame.  

Therefore, the entire movie is just not that fun to watch, apart from few disparate occasions where the filmmakers splurge (figuratively and literally) and indulge for a few seconds in – again predictable, but that’s OK – violence with some light gore. But that’s it. And I think the movie knows it limps in the thrills department because each and every single jump scare is always – without fail – reinforced with obnoxious nondiegetic music, as though to make sure the viewer would react. Is it because without the music these moments, especially when the barn elf is stalking the family or someone is investigating the barn, wouldn’t work? I beg to differ. I think they would work just fine. 

But they don’t because the filmmakers had zero confidence in their seasoning skills and opted to install these reinforcements just in case. And as a result, the movie is worth two-and-a-half stars, not four stars. It could have been a nice and intriguing piece of holiday entertainment with a Nordic twist and thanks to its many directorial and screenwriting decisions, it is almost completely void of playfulness. I suppose maybe it should have been titled There’s Nothing Really That Special in the Barn instead?