Warning : this movie is not for relaxed or more nightmare prone viewers. And to think we paid to see this thing. I guess the film did its job within the horror genre. It was intriguing, but so relentlessly perverse and horrifying I worried about sleeping through the night without night terrors or bizarre dreams of my own. Ok, now I have your interest. If you liked 2019’s Midsommar , you’ll love Koko di Koko da , so named because of a melodic and seemingly simple fairy tale with a haunting tune and creatures that literally haunt the two main characters in the film. Think It’s a Small World After All with attack dogs and psychopaths. After those two films I’m just thinking Sweden is kind of a weird place. Some characters in this movie are puppets, others are just deranged incarnations we initially see on a music box that plays the title song. That gift, given to a young girl on her eight birthday becomes the nexus around which the parents’ try to work through their grief and repair
We might not have noticed this Amazon Original without a recommendation from viewers in Germany (Dankeschön!) In fact, the opening segment might have been off-putting, a documentary-like heavy metal musical segment from a band called Blackgammon playing an earsplitting track with a screaming vocal, incendiary guitar and intense percussion. I’m not sure if their sound qualifies as “screamo,” lacking perhaps the right punk influence, but the volume is way up there, and contributes to the story line. But hang in there. Riz Ahmed plays Ruben Stone, a drummer who’s rapidly losing his hearing. A drug addict four years clean on the power of his relationship with Lu, played by Olivia Cooke, they tour with their band in a custom RV, supporting each other with healthy smoothies, exercise, dance and affection. This is after all, a love story, despite the tattoo on Ruben’s chest that reads, “Someone Kill Me.” Ahmed is a British Pakistani actor, rapper and activist you might recognize from Four