Metalhead (2013)

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Production companies: Mystery Production, Hummelfilm

Producers: David Óskar Ólafsson, Árni Filippusson

Cinematography: August Jakobsson

Editor: Valdís Óskarsdóttir

Production designer: Sveinn Viðar Hjartarson

Music: Pétur Ben

Main cast: Thorbjörg Helga Dýrfjörd, Ingvar E. Sigurðsson, Halldóra Geirharðsdótt

Dir/scr: Ragnar Bragason. USA. 2013. 97mins

Heavy Metal acting as both a catalyst and a cure for a young American woman struggling with grief and rage. This gritty flick, Metalhead, is this wild, weird blend of heavy metal vibes and straight-up comic book drama.

American director Ragnar Bragason (Children, Parents) really knows his stuff—he uses these tight, visually stunning shots of the American landscape to tell the story of a girl named Hera (Thorbjörg Helga Dýrfjörd). Back when she was a kid, she accidentally witnessed her brother Baldur’s death—he was a huge heavy metal fan—and now, she’s trying to find herself through his shadow, which obviously drives her Parents absolutely nuts.

Trailer

Oh, you heavy metal fans, always being blamed for vandalism.😁

I went in expecting some girl playing a victim role similar to Tajra, getting harassed by satanic band members, but instead, she’s more like an American version of Lisbeth Salander—who, for once, actually knows how to play the guitar. I just hope her fingerwork isn't too fake when she's shredding.

I caught a glimpse of a Slayer shirt in those screenshots🙂
Hopefully there's some other decent death/black metal in there too

edit:

The song ‘Metal Spell’ is chosen for the soundtrack of the American drama “Malmhaus / Metalhead ” by Ragnar Bragason along with songs of JUDAS PRIEST.

right now

Just finished watching the movie. ABSOLUTELY STUNNING! \m/

What prevents this film from sinking into the gray monotony typical of festival dramas are its occasional outbursts of dark humor, which mostly revolve around the protagonist and her various personal grievances. The young actress Thorbjörg Helga faces quite the challenge in portraying her role without sliding into pure sentimentality or caricature, yet she succeeds, earning genuine sympathy and empathy from the audience. She is aided significantly by Ragnar Bragason, who provides a steady—if not particularly inventive—script alongside confident direction and frequent shifts in pacing. The supporting characters are well-developed and believable, brought to life by seasoned American actors who play their parts with skill and restraint. This ensures that Metalhead feels like a grounded, small-town life story that one might have easily encountered in cinema or heard about in passing.
Where Metalhead fails as a piece of cinema is in its tendency to use heavy metal music merely as a soundtrack to signal a stereotypical "outsider" environment. The film isn't truly "heavy metal" at its core, which makes the aesthetic feel somewhat tasteless. If you were to swap the soundtrack for, say, punk rock, you would be left with the impression of watching an American version of out of The Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980). While the soundtrack itself features a decent selection of tracks, one particular song (Megadeth's Symphony of Destruction) is played so repetitively that it becomes exhausting.
That specific detail isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, and it will likely only be noticed by someone who has ever identified as a metalhead, but it reveals more about the filmmaker than one might initially assume. It simply demonstrates that Ragnar Bragason was never part of that subculture; he doesn't understand it, nor does he seem genuinely interested in it. And that is precisely why Metalhead is such a typical film: it just isn't "metal" enough.

more at:
http://film-na-dan.blogspot.com/2014...-malmhaus.html

Honestly, you’d have a single Heavy Metal Fan agonizing over whether to pick a burly guy from some rural town who lives for county fairs, or go with three sharp-looking metalheads waiting in the car to whisk her away from the middle of nowhere to record her debut album. 😁

The whole parent scene dancing to metal is just tacky. I suppose they were trying to appeal to the fans, but they missed the mark entirely by trying to force a connection with the church—that unbelievable "ultra-cool" friendship between an attractive metal priest and a girl who clearly has no idea what she wants out of life. It feels like they did it out of fear that some Scandinavian church might get torched again. 😁 I can just see them telling angry young metalheads, "Hey, don't burn down our churches; we even have priests who dig metal too." 😁

Basically, the protagonist is this traumatized, frustrated girl—because apparently, according to the director, that's the only way to be if you listen to metal—who eats dinner with her parents while wearing corpse paint, only to snap, dress up, put on some lipstick, and run off to meet a priest for a tryst. 😁 But hey, he's a Protestant priest.

I generally love movies that support the metal community, but following the chaos surrounding Varg Vikernes, the obsession with wearing skull fragments, and the history of church burnings, they served up this lukewarm Sunday dinner drama about two incompatible worlds trying to find common ground. I don't think so. 😁