Fanga is an Icelandic fairytale horror film that puts its own spin on the well known Beauty and the Beast story. Directed and written by Max Gold, this tells a familiar tale with a slight twist to it, and uses sparse, yet beautiful looking locations to tell that tale. Apologies to the actors here as I'm not entirely sure how to type their names the way some of them should be typed!
With her father close to death, Belle (Andrea Snaedal) seeks the help of the local wise woman (Hana Vagnerová) to assist. The woman tells the girl that the only way to prolong his life is to seek out a magical rose that is said to be guarded by a beast. Belle finds the cave where the flower is kept, and encounters the beast, who turns out to be a man afflicted with a curse (Gudmundur Thorvaldsson). Surprisingly he allows her to take the rose, but upon returning home she is informed by the wise woman that unless she stays by the beast's side her father's condition will once again deteriorate. For the sake of her father, Belle decides to go and live with the beast, and comes to form a friendship with the man, as well as learning that the only way for his curse to be lifted is for him to fall in love.
While just over ninety minutes long, Fanga (translating as Prisoner) managed to be a real slow moving film. It got me thinking that maybe a lazy Sunday wasn't the best time to view it as I legitimately kept falling asleep trying to watch it. This hides its budget by having natural locations for the most part, rather than sets, and by having a very minimal cast. Rather than be an actual beast, the man is normal looking, if deeply troubled. When the urge takes over him however he becomes a mindless killer who feasts on his victims, with it insinuated that the curse means the only way he is able to eat is by consuming the flesh of his victims. There was a decent dynamic between the two main characters, with Belle never seeming to be afraid of the man, and him never really being a threat, only on the rare occasions when he transforms. The make-up effects are subtle, with his transformation being more in the way he acts than in the way he looks.
Most the film takes place in and around the beast's remote cave, surrounded by some beautiful and lonely looking scenery. Not too much happens in a horror sense, this has more of a feel of a fairytale than of a horror, but this has some moments, such as the creepy looking zombie like creature that stands guard at the cave's entrance, a neat scene where the beast's prior victims stand around him as ghosts, and some arthouse style nightmare sequences later on which stitch together a variety of disparate images. The beasts attacks include some decent sound effects, but mainly the attacks are not shown on screen, with the afterwards moments shown more keenly than the actual attacks.
There isn't really more to say about Fanga, a very slow moving story which does put its own unique spin on a classic story. For me, I found it to be a struggle to watch due to how slow and uneventful it all was, despite the competent filmmaking and the great locations used.
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