This film starts strong with beautiful on-location nature footage of (presumably) Svalbard, Norway in the Arctic Circle. Set on a small tourist boat taking a multinational group of people on a tour of the landscape. It has the setup, it has a mysterious happening, and then it has nothing but vague hints and a sputtering narrative that runs out of steam and ends.

It’s a short film but even half of that is spent in an abandoned town with characters acting unnaturally and unbelievably. I’d say this is yet another Covid film where they had access to the big empty world but didn’t have a plot to fill it. That might not be true since the little town they film in could be abandoned part of the year or with such a small population it was easy to film around them. Either way, it simply feels like an opportunity to put something on screen without any concrete plot.

I’m sure there’s argument to be had for this being a modern Twilight Zone type story where questions are posed but go unanswered. I guess that might be the case… in which case I’d request a 30 minute episode and not close to 90 minutes with half that the actor wandering aimlessly around.

There are half answers that ultimately don’t amount to anythinght. Cut to credits. Might as well have been a found footage film with their propensity to not bother writing an ending to a film.

Watch it if you want pretty vistas. No arguing that we don’t get many films set in this environment. But maybe demand more story to the story. Or more action or more drama… more than the not much that happens here.

Score: 64