Black Crab stars Noomi Rapace as a soldier who must deliver vital but mysterious package across the frozen Swedish archipelago. It seems a war has been raging for years, devastating the country and the populace. With a small squad, Rapace ice skates across a bleak, frozen world encountering enemy soldiers, paranoia, survivors, frozen ships, and the like.

The film drops us in the middle of what seems like the final days. The end of everything. We never get a lot of back story… and that’s purely intentional and I dig it. The details don’t matter… all that matters is an encroaching sense of hopelessness and doom. Things fall apart. I love the grim mood and just wish the rest of the movie held up as well.

The movie drags on a little too much in the middle and at the end. I think it could have ended sooner and with a more nebulous conclusion but I guess they felt they needed more heroism to justify the runtime. I disagree… the grim inevitability in the film suggests to me they should have stuck with uncertainty. And, to be fair, it’s not like we get a happy ending, but I think they tried to hard to give us the semblance of heroism. Not the mood the film needed.

Overall, it’s a solid effort and there’s some nice film making and cinematography, if you like a stark frozen wasteland on your screen. It accomplishes much of what it sets out to do, it just needed help with the pacing, the ending, and the characterizations.

Score: 76