Reviews

For me, this was a film of two halves. Some good aspects and not-so-good aspects.

I felt the gentleness and build up of the first half of the movie was kinda ruined by the descent into the ridiculousness of the second half. It was kind of gearing up for some mysterious mind games and scares and instead became almost a comedy gore-fest. Despite the slow pace at first, the actors manage to hold your interest as the story unfolds. Until it stops unfolding.

While I do love horror and the silliness that is part of the genre, even I struggled to stay with a story that involves a woman in labour managing to murder the Mother Superior, the Cardinal and the Priest all before giving birth on the mountainside. I don't know what the screaming was as the baby was born or the teeth chomping on the umbilical cord either.

In it's favour, it was short. And the storyline, especially in the beginning, was intriguing.

This is a warm happy gem of a film. Watching the very prim and proper Edith especially say naughty words was surprisingly entertaining and delightful. The leads and supporting cast were great fun to watch and the simple story wasn't over engineered or fluffed up.

Something I loved about it was subtlety of the deeper messages. Women coming together to support women, in spite of differences or temptation for judgement. The hints at the disapproval of the suffragette collective movement while this one individual was making headlines writing letters, the determination of the WPO when her male superiors dismissed her, the oppression of father against daughter and the need to scream and escape from that. Even at the end it wasn't about hate, or even right and wrong or justice, but about breaking free of whatever cuffs are binding us. We need to let it out, to connect with each other, and sometimes that's in the form of a good laugh and very naughty words.

This started well and had potential to be a really good watch. But no. It wasn't.

Episode 3 is where it totally unravelled for me. Killers don't hang about having heart to hearts with their intended victims. And the final episode was dull and disappointing. It all just felt a bit lazy and not done properly or with much conviction.

The characters were unconvincing, including a Witness Liaison Officer who I wouldn't trust to liaise between pasta and a plate, and a grown up baddie that just wasn't (though his lines did include "innit", presumably to detract from the incredulity of his accent).

I'm also not sure exactly what Jodie witnessed to warrent this entire plot. It all added up to silliness that was more annoying than entertaining. So, a decent first episode but not what it could have been.

Wasn't quite sure what I was watching when I started this and now I've watched all the episodes I'm still not entirely sure. The Bones bros were absorbing to watch and without them I'm not sure I'd have stuck around.

What this is missing is a "how we made this" feature because I have many questions! The contestants were seemingly put in very dangerous situations and we all know Bond had stuntmen to help him out... Scenes were obviously set up but there were so many story gaps between A and B it started to be annoying. And I doubt this is the most environmentally friendly programme possible given explosions in the snow, hacking through jungle and (I assume!) multiple international flights? That made it feel somewhat dated and out of touch.

There were bits of this that worked really well but the way it was edited felt off. Some contestants had the screen time to develop character and connection with viewer but others didn't, some element of interaction or competition with each other would have worked better, particularly towards the end. The shooting thing didn't make a lot of sense and felt unfair, as a viewer you wanted contestants to have their shot through the questions not their literal shooting ability in the freezing cold.

I'd watch another series if they changed the format and invested a bit more in viewer experience, rather than just chopping up what they thought were the interesting bits and leaving the rest in the cutting room.

Ok, so whilst very much not a climber even I found some plot holes difficult to get past. Usually this would ruin a film for me, but this was a great watch in spite of the silly things like no one knowing where they were and pulling a rope with bare hands. That must really hurt.

My feet actually started getting sweaty as they climbed. I'm not particularly afraid of heights but it made me go gooey, not often I watch something that provokes such a strong physical reaction! I keep asking myself how they managed to film this, amazing effort went into this film.

I could have maybe done without the predictable husband affair stuff, especially as after a year without climbing and a take out alcohol diet, would you really be capable of climbing to such a height? Maybe not. But I still really enjoyed watching this. Considering it's basically two women stuck on a giant pole for 1 hr 45 mins they managed to keep my attention a lot more than many "better" films! Sometimes you have to switch your logic off a bit and just go with it.

This was a frustrating watch. Aside from being yet another Netflix series that was twice as long as it should have been, there were so many illogical or nonsensical bits which added up to a very exasperating watch.

I'm not familiar with the Danish healthcare system, but given Netflix is an international platform a lot of context was missing. For an ER, not a lot seemed to be going on. Except heart attacks. Why did no one question why everyone was dying of heart attacks and nothing else, especially heart attacks in non cardiac patients? Why are the patients in rooms by themselves? Why are the nurses ordering doctors about? Why is there a handwritten "death log" in the break room?!

The biggest frustration had to be when Arne died and the "logical" explanation for the drugs in his system was that he got up from his sick bed, entered the medicine room, knew and found the correct drugs, went back to his bed, administered them and then got rid of the vials, and then died. With no one seeing any of it. Surely, even if anyone was supposed to believe that, you then put safeguards in place so patients can't just help themselves to drugs when they feel like it? You don't just shrug your shoulders and think never mind and carry on exactly as before?!!!

I didn't understand why Pernille was shunned by her colleagues at the end. Surely you would shun your colleague who was killing people, not the one who stopped it? And why was she just going back to work heavily pregnant? What had she been doing for the intervening months (apart from making a baby)? And why not use your phone video to record Christine- if the concern was that no one would believe her if she reported her concerns to management why would they believe her when she claims to have witnessed it and produced evidence in a bin?!! Why couldn't she send an anonymous email- this was very recent history with modern technology available? The whole ending was rushed. It was like no one knew which character to focus on so we didn't get the whole story of any of them.

If this wasn't a true story I'd put these issues down to poor writing and editing. Maybe some of this was just really poor real-life practice and reflects the true events as they happened, maybe the producers took a lot of dramatic license because they needed four episodes? Either way, it made me that bit extra grateful for the beurocracy and safeguards that are annoying but essential to protect us...