Crew
Director – Magnus Martens, Screenplay – Aleksander Kirkwood Brown, Producers – Kjetil Omberg & Jørgen Storm Rosenberg, Photography – Mika Orasmaa, Music – Lasse Enersen, Visual Effects – Troll Visual Effects (Supervisor – Vesa Jokinen), Special Effects Supervisor – Rick Marr, Makeup Effects Designers – Dimitra Drakopoulou & Ida Astero Welle, Prosthetics Designer – Jim Udenberg, Production Design – Åsa Nilsson. Production Company – 74 Entertainment.
Cast
Martin Starr (Bill Nordheim), Amrita Acharia (Carol Nordheim), Townes Bunner (Lukas Nodheim), Kiran Shah (Main Elf), Zoe Winther-Hansen (Nora Nordheim), Henriette Steenstrup (Liv), Jeppe Beck Laursen (Raymond), Calle Hellevang-Larsen (Tor Åge), Eldar Vågan (Erik)
Plot
American Bill Nordheim inherits a farm in remote Norway and moves there with his wife Carol and two children with plans to turn the barn into a B&B. The teenage daughter Nora in particular is unenthused about living in a snowy town. The younger son Lukas learns about the legend of the barn elves that are friendly and help around the place but can be upset and turn malicious by bright lights and loud noises. Lukas then meets and befriends the elf of the farm’s barn. However, Bill and Carol ignore Lukas’s warnings and hold a party in the barn where the music and Christmas lights proceed to turn the barn elf malicious.
The barn elf or Nisse is a figure from Scandinavian folklore. It is depicted as a traditional elf – as short, wearing a long peaked hat and with a beard. It is regarded as a household spirit and will live in the house or barn, often doing things to help around the house. However, it must be treated with respect, which includes leaving out a bowl of porridge for it on Christmas morning. If treated with disrespect, it can turn malevolent and wreak mischief around the house, including killing cattle.
Magnus Martens is a Norwegian director who has been working since the 1990s, having made modest Norwegian comedies such as United (2003) and Jackpot (2011). He was brought to the US in the 2010s and directed episodes of tv series such as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013-2020), 12 Monkeys (2015-8), Fear the Walking Dead (2015-2023) and Luke Cage (2016-8), among others.
As it starts in, I wasn’t quite sure which way There’s Something in the Barn was going to fall – it is pitched as a horror film, but the tone is more one of light fantasy. The scenes with the American family as oddball outsiders in the Norwegian town seems played for broad comedy, particularly when it comes to the family’s vulgar gaucheness and the locals’ eccentricities. For a film made by Norwegians it seems to portray their own country as rural and oblivious to much of the outside world. On the other hand, the appeal to the American market only reaches for comic caricatures.
The trope of the kid who discovers a magical creature and keeps their existence hidden from adults goes back to at least E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), if not earlier works in children’s literature. Here much of this plays out with predictable, easy comic beats around the parent’s cluelessness and son Townes Bunner’s trying to keep the elf a secret and prevent it from being upset. None of this ever reaches the particularly funny.
The fun of There’s Something in the Barn gets to be in its latter third when the malevolent elf (joined by others) gets loose and wreaks havoc. There are amusing scenes with the family and others being attacked, chased, fighting off elves with household items, things being blown up and even people killed. What the film reminds of, if anything, is a Norwegian version of Gremlins (1984) – the whole stipulations about no loud noise or bright lights seem very similar to the rules of not feeding the Mogwai. These scenes do perk the show up somewhat and are not afraid of being occasionally gory.
Trailer here