FILM GUTTER REVIEW: ​MANEBRAND (MOONFIRE) (2018)

Dir. Kasper Juhl, Denmark, 100 mins

It's one of those great little pleasures in life when a film lands in your inbox, and rarely moreso than when that film happens to be the new movie from Kasper Juhl. His slice of extreme arthouse, Your Flesh, Your Curse, remains one of my favourite films of recent times (although it is still a deeply hard watch), so when Manebrand arrived I was pretty excited. No doubts that a film like YF,YC would be a hard act to follow, but I was heartily intrigued to see what this director would offer up in this more recent offering.

Manebrand is a very different sort of movie, following the disturbed life of siblings Valdemar and Alex. They seem to have next to no responsibility and spend most of their life drinking, partying and taking drugs, as well as throughout most of the movie seeming to share a strange, almost sexual tension between them. The two of them go so far as to hire prostitutes together before verbally and physically abusing them in a couple of distinctly uncomfortable scenes. However this dark, cyclical existence is broken when Valdemar starts to date Rebekah, with Alex's jealousy and desire for her brother's girlfriend twisting things in a darker direction than ever before.
 
This one feels like more of a very bleak drama than a horror movie, but there are certainly lots of moments that are unpleasant and distinctive enough to leave an impression. However this one for me is messy in the narrrative sense, and doesn't really move forward in much of a linear fashion. You could level the same at Your Flesh, Your Curse, but that sort of bizarre dreamscape was better suited to that non-traditional structure. The performances are certainly committed, and contribute to a handful of powerful moments, and Juhl's skills as a director remain beyond doubt.

The other thing that holds this one back for me is that I didn't really feel as though the characters are as well-developed as they could be – it's apparent from frame one that the pair of them are pretty messed up, but there's never really much to ever explain why. The opening text seems to give a hint, but it's never really backed up throughout the film, so the actions and interactions feel as though they are somehow lacking the background needed to really make the maximum impact. There are one or two scenes that feel a little out of place, and never get fully explained throughout the duration of the movie.
 
I wouldn't call this one a mis-step, and it's possible my expectations of the director are a bit too high after some previous offerings. It's a good solid effort, but it also leaves a sense that there could have been something better here that slightly got left behind – with more solid backdrop and character development this could have been absolutely stunning, but as it is it falls into good rather than anything above that.

RATING: 7/10. Kasper Juhl certainly remains a director to watch, and continues to purvey a brutal, dark and impactful style in his movies. This one has flashes of great stuff, but the message is somewhat muddled in a confusing, sometimes meandering narrative and some broad character development. It's certainly worth a look for those that like their drama very harsh and abrasive, but there needed to be a little something more to this one to really reach the absolute heights Juhl has achieved before.