User Reviews

This Swedish movie revolves around a school girl and is set in a small village where she lives with her mother and sister. I saw the movie in Goa today, as part of the International Film Festival of India. The director Beata Gårdeler was present to introduce the movie at the festival, but weirdly, the organizations did not care to arrange for any Q&A after the movie got over.

Flocken is a powerful movie where everyone has acted brilliantly. The movie starts off with a neutral (or rather happy) feel to it, and then as it progresses, you can see things getting darker and darker. By the time it ends, you are left with a depressing feeling. You want to enter the story and make things right for yourself. You feel outright bad for the girl (who is dealing with getting raped by her classmate; and very few people believe her). Surprisingly, no one is shown as a clear villain in the movie. Everyone's point of view is presented in subtle ways (and more so, in cinematic ways – by use of visuals more than dialogues). Overall, this is an example of fine cinema. One might not like how the movie ends, but one cannot ignore the consistent gripping impact the movie has on the audience. Good job Beata!

I appreciate the quality of production, acting and general ambience created in this movie. It was gripping enough to keep me watching for the whole 1hr 47min. There's a slightly unsettling feeling throughout, which keeps you intrigued as to how things are going to turn out.

It turns out, nowhere. Nothing really happens. The village fall out over the alleged rape by a schoolboy. They don't believe the victim and harass her family sometimes. Then it ends. After sitting through a long, miserable and slow 107 minutes of my life.

Some people might appreciate this film for its general production quality, but it feels like one of those movies made for being a stylish cinematic piece with very little substance. I need things to happen. Maybe I'm just a gore-seeker, but I was hoping at least some shots would be fired or some kind of violent crescendo would ensue. Or some kind of moment where the truth comes out or the boy concedes his guilt. Something to be a climax to the descending fallout between the characters. But it ends just as it could have got actually interesting.

Unless you like slow burns that don't really come to anything, but are slow burns for the sake of just burning slow and then flickering out weakly, then I would avoid.