Some films you walk into hoping they hold up, and this was one we had circled long before the lights went down. No Rest for the Wicked sat near the top of our most anticipated list the second Fantasia Film Festival started dropping its programming waves, and our gut turned out to be right. We loved it.
It ended up close to the top of everything we have seen at the festival so far, and we have seen a lot; as Arthur put it, “we’ve seen what three, four movies in the last two days?” This one stuck.
What No Rest for the Wicked Is Really About
No Rest for the Wicked is a Danish film co-written and directed by Kasper Kalle, and it plays like a dark Gothic period piece with a supernatural pulse beneath the surface. The story follows two men on a small, remote island in 1862 who meet through a rescue and slowly fall for each other. One of them is carrying a very dark secret. As their feelings grow, they also have to survive the time period and the deep prejudice toward queer people that comes with it, all while a supernatural element starts to spread across the island.
We kept things fairly spoiler-free on the episode, mostly because the film had just world premiered and had not been released yet. That said, the twist is not exactly buried. The official Fantasia synopsis basically gives it away, and even the barebones IMDb line (“five words,” as we joked, though it is closer to one short sentence) tells you a fisherman falls for a whaler.
The Cast Behind the Forbidden Romance
Our lead, Baldur, is played by Egor Venned, a newcomer, and he is quietly excellent. Opposite him is Helge, the traveling Danish whaler, played by Pilou Asbæk. A lot of you will know him instantly. He is Euron Greyjoy from Game of Thrones, “the shitty uncle that tried to take over,” and he has been in Overlord (that fun World War II zombie movie), Ghost in the Shell, and Foundation. He usually plays intense, often flat-out evil men, so watching him soften into something this tender is a genuine surprise, and it works.
Baldur’s mother, Ásla, is played by Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen, who looked familiar to us even if we could not place her; she seems to work mostly in Danish productions. And keep an eye out for a villager named Jakub, played by Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, who has popped up in Succession, Captain America: Brave New World, and recently Masters of the Universe as Fisto.
It is a small central cast, basically three people carrying the weight, and they carry it well. The chemistry between the two leads is so natural it is a little unfair. We could not stop thinking about how long it must have taken them to get that comfortable together.
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Slow Burn Horror, Eggers-Level Visuals, and a Different Kind of Vampire
Let’s be upfront: this is a slow burn, and a real one. We both went in expecting that (Gothic pieces almost always move at this pace), so it did not throw us, but we know it is not for everyone. Arthur felt a couple of scenes could have been trimmed without losing anything, and we get how the pacing could wear on some folks. If dread that takes its time makes you restless, go in knowing.
Regardless of that, the visuals are stunning. The whole thing feels organic and real, shot in a way that pulled Robert Eggers straight to mind, just softer and more romantic than Eggers usually goes. The night shots are gorgeous, the fog does actual work in the story, and the natural scenery does the rest. There is no need to dress it up. The score is lovely the whole way through, subtle instead of overbearing, and there is a funeral song performed past the halfway mark that nearly had one of us crying in the theater. It starts on camera and slides into the full mix so smoothly you barely catch the seam.
Then there is the supernatural side, and this is where it gets interesting. It is a vampire film at its core, but not the kind you are picturing. Nobody is running around biting the whole village. It is not Dracula sailing from Transylvania to London with a ship full of corpses.
It is quieter, sadder, and tied to grief and folklore in a way we had not really seen before. The horror here is subtle, the jump moments feel earned rather than manufactured, and the whole thing flows.
Oppression, Acceptance, and Love That Outlasts Death
Underneath the horror, this is a film about repression and about love refusing to stay buried, even past death. What we appreciated is that it does not turn its closed-minded characters into cartoon villains. You understand where the villagers come from, people raised in an isolated place and time where difference simply was not part of the conversation. Nobody here is easy to hate.
By the end, there is a real thread of acceptance running through it, and that is what makes it land. As Arthur put it, you cannot “pray the gay away or chase it away or kill it away, whatever away.” Meaghan’s response says the rest:
You can’t just do anything like that. And if people have strong feelings for one another, they will gravitate together.
We will also note, in the spirit of full journalistic honesty, that the film features several beautiful scenes of very attractive men in cable knit sweaters. If that is your specific reason for showing up, “there’s a lot of that going.” Even Arthur, who claimed no comment, quietly admitted the wardrobe was doing something: “I like a sweater like they have. They’re very comfortable.“
Our Verdict, the Fantasia Awards, and Where to Watch
We nearly forgot our own format and skipped the ratings, which is very us. For the record: Meaghan landed at a 9, and Arthur at a very solid 8, maybe 8.5. We have almost nothing negative to say beyond a couple of trimmable scenes. It is a beautiful, quietly devastating movie, and it did not go unnoticed by the festival either.
No Rest for the Wicked took home the Cheval Noir Award for Best Director for Kasper Kalle, and Pilou Asbæk won an Outstanding Performance award, both richly deserved. (For what it’s worth, we would have handed one to Egor Venned too.) Nightborn, which we covered in a previous episode, won the Cheval Noir for Best Film, with Seidi Haarla also taking an Outstanding Performance award.
As for catching it yourself, options are thin right now. It is screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival on August 9, with a Denmark release on September 3. We are hoping it gets more attention and at least a VOD or limited theatrical run over here. If you have a local cinema that leans into foreign films, keep an eye out. It deserves the room.
More Fantasia coverage is coming your way over the next week, including The Glorious Dead from the Adams Family, a new Katharine Isabelle film called Junction Row, the premiere of Buddy, and Freaks part two, which we did not even know existed until the schedule dropped. Until next time, stay scared and stay tuned.
Life on the Faroe Islands, No Trees Included
The setting is the Faroe Islands, and it does a lot of heavy lifting here. These islands are technically part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but they run as their own thing, with their own parliament and governance. There are around 18 of them, a population a little under 55,000 as of 2025, and their own dialect, Faroese, which sits closer to Icelandic in its roots. Both Faroese and Danish are spoken across the film, so the whole thing runs with subtitles. It is a foreign film, and it wears that proudly.
Here is the detail that hooked us both, and it is real: the Faroe Islands have no naturally growing trees. Baldur asks about it in the movie; we side-eyed the screen, and it checks out. The climate is too cold, not sunny enough, and windy pretty much constantly, so saplings do not stand a chance.
And when they do try to grow, the sheep eat them. Arthur summed up the ecological crisis with real gravity: “Sheep are destroying the trees.” The capital also gets some of the least recorded sunlight on the planet, which led Arthur to a bold anthropological theory about the locals: “Most people must be very brittle.” Science, folks.