For almost the first half of No Rest for the Wicked, the only thing marking it as a genre movie is its score, full of ominous electronic drones and sharp strings.
The look, with foreboding aerial shots of the Faroe islands' craggy mountains and almost only natural lighting for night scenes, is also a hint; it just seems rude to think that non-genre films aren't capable of this level of literal darkness.
Suffice to say that it looks and sounds like a genre film. But the content of its early scenes undercuts the sense of dread its aural and visual world conjures. Perhaps more than dread, the literal and metaphorical darkness are meant to clue us into how stuck protagonist Baldur (Egor Venned) feels on the Faroe islands where he lives in a small, religious village with his mother in 1862, and how the arrival of Helge (Pilou Asbæk) brings hope of an exciting future into his life.
At the start of the movie, Baldur discovers Helge stuck in a row boat in a rocky inlet and attempts to save him, only to fall into the water himself and be saved by Helge. After the reciprocal saving, Helge, a Danish whaler, comes to live with Baldur and his mother Ásla (Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen), planning to stay until another ship seeking workers arrives. Helge is extremely charming and Ásla immediately sees a romantic prospect to fill the empty shoes of her dead husband.
Baldur isn't as immediately convinced, but as they spend time together searching for and then repairing the boat Baldur fell out of in the opening, he's won over by the Dane's brightness. A moment where Helge whistles as he wanders off to pee and Baldur smiles to himself about it is lovely and communicates more than dialogue ever could.
Throughout, director Kasper Kalle makes fantastic use of his three leads' faces to tell viewers, and allow the characters to tell each other, things that can't be spoken. Milliseconds of eye contact and twitches of a smile at the corner of a mouth develop into broad smiles of affection and powerful stares of desire, as well as expressions of disappointment, despair, and horror.
Because despite the sweetness and beauty of the initial romance, No Rest for the Wicked is also a horror movie. A key turning point shifts the film into explicitly supernatural territory. Fascinatingly, though, it never pins down what kind of supernatural. There's classic vampire, ghost, and possession narrative beats and imagery, with a very nice dash of body horror thrown in. But even when the villagers respond according to established lore, they never say vampire or ghost or possessed out loud.
Refusing to fall firmly into any of these specific subgenres allows the film to offer surprises in its story and create some unique imagery and scares (of both the visceral and existential varieties). It toys with audience expectations in the wake of the villagers' response by undercutting what has historically rid people of these "evils."
"Evils" in quotes because the movie remains a love story as it develops into horror, and there's never any cruelty in the film. Beyond the supernatural elements, its consideration of how a devoutly Christian community in 1862 would react to the discovery of gay men in their midst sidesteps the expected social cruelty without painting an unrealistic utopia of acceptance.
No Rest for the Wicked is a unique and beautifully shot, acted, and written film. And yet there's something holding it back from true greatness. There's nothing specific here that stands out as a detrimental flaw; its many successful parts just don't transcend into a greater sum. It's certainly a film worth seeking out, but perhaps more than that, it's an announcement of a filmmaker to watch.
The film screened at the 2026 Chicago International Film Festival.