Heavy Trip (5 Stars)

This is the tenth film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Ever since I saw the trailer for this film I knew it would be something special. I expected it to be one of the best films of the festival, and after seeing it I consider it to be one of the best films of the year, surpassing even "Mandy".

The film is about an amateur heavy metal band, in particular its lead singer Turo, in the remote Finnish town Taivalkoski. Their dream is to make it big, but after 12 years of practising in the cellar success seems to be far distant. By chance a Norwegian comes to the town to buy reindeer blood, and it turns out that he's the manager of the Norwegian heavy music festival Northern Damnation. This awakes hopes that they can play their first public concert.

The film is so funny that the whole audience was laughing throughout. I assume that there were few heavy metal fans in the audience, so it seemed ridiculous to them that there should be aggressive heavy metal in Finland. I know otherwise. Despite its relatively small population Finland has a large number of heavy metal bands, such as Korpiklaani and Children of Bodom.

The film might be funny, but the music is exactly what heavy metal fans like. They describe their musical style as "symphonic post-apocalyptic reindeer-grinding Christ-abusing extreme Fennoscandinavian pagan battle metal", but the name is the only thing that's comical about their music.

It's a brilliant film. I can't wait to see it again.

This is Ellena, one of the organisers of the Fantasy Film Festival. She's a nice girl, even though she's not a heavy metal fan. Or maybe she is. Appearances can be deceptive. Not many people know that I'm a heavy metal fan.