Blasted Parent Guide

Sebastian (Axel Bøyum) is under a lot of pressure. Apart from his upcoming wedding, he’s been trying to land a big client for almost six years. When his pitch to the client, Kasper (Andre Sørum), bombs, Sebastian ends up inviting Kasper to his bachelor party in the rural valley town of Hessdalen, in the hopes of maintaining a personal connection. But Kasper isn’t going to be the only surprise guest, as Sebastian’s fiancée, Josefine (Cecile Svendsen), has taken it upon herself to invite Sebastian’s childhood best friend and laser tag partner Mikkel (Fredrick Skogsrud). While Sebastian frets about managing his party, strange lights in the sky over Hessdalen signal far, far larger problems on the horizon…problems which will make his concerns about his bachelor party seem insignificant.

Blasted suffers most from a serious tone problem. While the humor and plot are juvenile at best, and probably suited to an audience composed primarily of twelve-year-olds, the filmmakers seemed to think they were making a raunchier adult comedy and packed over 100 f-bombs and a whole lot of sexual references into the dialogue. The result is something which is equally unwatchable for both teens and adults. There might be a sweet spot for sophomoric older teens, but for the most part this is a film marooned between audiences. It’s too dumb for adults and too crude and profane for kids.

What’s worse is that the film was obviously inspired by high quality sources. It draws heavily from Edgar Wright films, particularly The World’s End, which sees some estranged old friends set out on a massive pub crawl only to find themselves fighting off an alien invasion. But as much as it apes Wright’s dynamic visual style, Blasted falls completely flat in the writing. As a rule of thumb, it’s not a good idea for a bad film to remind the audience of far better films. This flick is a hard enough sell to an audience without constantly reminding them they could just go watch an objectively better version of the same movie.

I can’t really think of a compelling reason to watch this unless you find the sound of conversational Norwegian somehow relaxing. None of the jokes land, and all of the characters are overly simplistic and frequently irritating. On top of that, this film’s pacing drags so badly that I resorted to my ace in the hole: setting the Netflix playback speed to 1.25x normal, just to get me out of there a little sooner. Honestly, it didn’t make much difference. The characters were still annoying, the jokes were still bad, and the plot was still goofy. I just didn’t have the heart to wait for it to end on its own. Consider it a mercy killing.