Echoes from the Dead (2013)
On a foggy day, Julia's six-year-old son Jens is called missing. Despite a thorough search, the boy is never found. Twenty years later, Julia’s father receives one of the shoes Jens was wearing the day he disappeared. Who sent it? Why? Is the boy still alive? This inexplicable act suddenly awakens a hope in Julia that she might see her son again… or that she could find his body and murderer. As she returns to her father’s island, she hears stories of the mythical Nils Kant – a murderer who once was the terror of the island. He is dead and buried for years, long before Julia’s son disappeared. But Julia’s father uncovers that his death and burial were only a fake. While on his tracks, Julia accepts the help and love of Lennart, a local police inspector. His dark and mysterious past brings him a lot closer to Jens’s disappearance that she might think…
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Memorable, crazy movie
It is a performances centric movie
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
ECHOES FROM THE DEAD is a very ordinary Swedish crime noir, heavily influenced by the likes of WALLANDER. It's nowhere near the level of quality of the outstanding MILLENNIUM series, which will always be the benchmark for this kind of film-making. ECHOES boasts an arresting opening sequence, but follows this up with a slow-moving tale in which the past inevitably impinges on the present. Murder and disappearances are involved here, and there's a strong female lead, but there's a little too much atmosphere building and not quite enough intricate storytelling. I found that the whole thing left me quite cold.
Why the low rating? Very unfair. This movie is much better than expected. The act takes place in a small community in Sweden. Here old conflicts come to the surface when the adult daughter returns to her hometown to help her old father. The film is both a drama and an exciting crime drama. Weird events come back and we are wrapped up in an exciting story that really makes you hooked. The film has some of the most famous Swedish actors in the lead, including Lena Endre, which in my opinion makes one of her better performances in this movie, as the daughter who struggles with the past, and who fight to find the truth at last. Often it's unfortunate to mix different genres into one and the same movie, but here it works great. Now you know: When this shows up on a TV channel late night, then it's time to see it.
Daniel Alfredson's 'Echoes from the Dead' may have a boringly generic name, but it's actually quite good, a slow-burning thoughtful story of the attempt of an old man and his daughter to finally lay to rest a tragedy from their past. It's unusual to watch a film where the youngest of the main cast are middle-aged but the actors have no problems in carrying off the story. There's something of the flavour that you can get when watching 'Wallander', of a modern Sweden where the trappings of the consumerist society are layered quite thinly on a harsher, more primitive, style of life. The only thing that doesn't quite work is the tale's conclusion, which requires some oddly out-of-character behaviour by one of the participants.
This film, set on the Swedish island of Öland, opens shortly after the Second World War when we see a young man, Nils Kant, shoot two German soldiers. Then as he escapes on a train he guns down the policeman who was about to arrest him. The action then moves forward to 1993 when protagonist Julia Davidsson visits the island to see her father. She left after her young son disappeared twenty years previously; it was assumed that he had drowned but her father and one of his friends are convinced that he died in the nearby grassland and that somehow the killing is connected to Nils Kant. When Julia finds her father's friend dead, after an apparent accident, she decides to stay a few more days on the island. While there she befriends the local policeman who assures her that it was impossible that Kant was involved as he'd seen the body of Kant before he was buried in 1968 after years on the run in Cuba. When a child's sandal is sent to Julia's father it becomes apparent that somebody else wants the case reopened. As the story progresses we learn more about what happened to Nils Kant after he left the island and ultimately discover what happened to Julia's son all those years ago.This Swedish film is a fairly routine offering; an enjoyable mystery in an interesting setting but feels more like a one-off TV drama than a film. There are some tense moments and a bit of a twist at the end although I'm sure most viewers will suspect the culprit even if they don't work out the details. Lena Endre does a solid job as Julia and is ably supported by Tord Peterson and Thomas W. Gabrielsson as her father and policeman Lennart Henriksson respectively although not speaking Swedish I can't comment on whether the actors playing islanders have the correct accents! The Öland setting, with its windswept scenery, adds to the haunting feel of mystery. Overall this may not be as dark as many mysteries coming out of the Nordic countries at the moment it is a decent enough mystery.These comments are based on watching the film in Swedish with English subtitles.