After after life: a review of Post Mortem–No One Dies in Skarnes

Post Mortem

Norwegian Post Mortem: ingen dør i Skarnes

Directed by Harald Zwart & Petter Holmsen

Original language Norwegian

Production Producers Espen Horn Kristian Strand Sinkerud, Production company Motion Blur

Distributor Netflix

Starring:

Kathrine Thorborg Johansen as Live Hallangen

Elias Holmen Sørensen as Odd Hallangen

André Sørum as Reinert

Kim Fairchild as Judith

Sarah Khorami as Rose

Terje Strømdahl as Arvid

Øystein Røger as Dr. Sverre

The Scandinavian countries – Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland – have developed their own unique genre of horror. From the eerie and scary strange-friendship film Let the Right One In to Pål Øie’s Hidden, and Minna Sundberg’s vast post-apocalyptic monster graphic novel Stand Still Stay Silent, the Nordic version of the strange, the monstrous, and the afflicted unusually polite and decent people in death struggles. The monsters are often nice. The non-monsters who are people monsters are often nice. Which just makes it that much scarier.

The Nords are fully aware of this, of course. There’s even a satirical show about Vikings who slaughter, rape, and try earnestly to be Woke called Norsemen that plays up on this seeming dichotomy. Thus the scariest characters tend to be pleasant, unassuming, and very polite. They don’t even have sinister smirks on their hidden faces as their next victim walks away. In such stories, the arch-demoness is not going to shriek, “…and your little doggie, too!” She is more likely to call out, “Bjorn! Pull up your collar. You don’t wish to be catching a cold.” They’re so nice. So civilized.

Post Mortem is a piece with this peculiar but attractive genre.

The series starts with Live (pronounced like the verb), who is having a very bad morning as two local cops poke at her corpse they find laying in a field just outside of the town of Skanes. The cops are also having a bad morning because they know that, lacking any evidence of a violent death, they have to call the local undertaker in. But this is a small, remote town that looks a bit like Iqaluit only with some trees, and there’s only one undertaker, a two-man operation run by Live’s father and brother. Well, that’s awkward.

They’re prepping Live for her funeral, and she wakes up. Yup, she’s a vampire. Only nobody knows it except her father, since this has popped up in the family before. The two cops, who play major roles in the rest of the series, conclude they made some sort of strange mistakes, get on their bicycles, and peddle off to their usual roles of finding lost cats and telling children to behave. Kim Fairchild (Judith) all but steals the show.

Live is a Norwegian vampire. Her ethics and morals and intelligence remain intact, tempered only by a growing lust for the old red stuff.

Arvid dies in the second episode, and Live’s brother Odd (well named) takes over. First thing he discovers is the undertaker business is bankrupt, and creditors and the bank are closing in. Part of the trouble is that nobody ever dies in Skanes.

The other cop is a young fellow named Reinert, who has had a bit of a crush of Live since childhood. Live pushes him away after her death, and a sympathetic friend sets him up on a date with the only other eligible female in the same age group in town. That date turns out hilarious, if more than a bit inexplicable. (Don’t people GOSSIP in this town?)

The story takes some fun twists and turns over the six episodes, and you find yourself liking, and then caring about the characters.

It’s in Norwegian, so most viewers will have to depend on subtitles. Well, if they ever decide to dub it, they could always get the cast from Fargo.

Well worth viewing—lots of fun, with enough gravitas to prevent it from just being silly.

Now on Netflix.