FANTASIA 2018: HEAVY TRIP Movie Review

HEAVY TRIP

Fantasia 2018 Film Festival Review
By Jeff Sanders

Any movie about a band who bases their music on “The sound of hundreds of reindeer souls going to reindeer hell.” must have some sort of comedy merit. HEAVY TRIP certainly does despite finding itself a little too cute for its own good. I know, a movie about a symphonic post-apocalyptic reindeer-grinding Christ-abusing extreme war pagan Fennoscandian metal band is not generally considered cute, but this is Finland, the same folk who brought us the Evil Santa Christmas Horror masterpiece RARE EXPORTS, and they have their own way of doing things.

Juuso Laatio and Jukka Vidgren’s HEAVY TRIP is about a small-town group of buddies who work menial day jobs as orderlies, librarians, and factory workers. After work, however, they melt eardrums and crush skulls (at least with themselves) as a death metal band. Around town, they are considered jokes, harassed by local law, blasted with gay slurs and threatened by another musician. Why? Because they are weird. It is a cheap trope used in broad comedy and is the part of the film that feels too familiar. There is even an opposites-attract romantic relationship between the star Turo (Johannes Holopainen) and Miia (Minka Kuustonen), a flower shop worker whose father is the local police captain. We have seen these setups in way too many comedies in the past (THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER for Christsakes!) and they have frankly been done better. When the film works, and ultimately it does, is when the film takes the cute and runs it through the meatgrinder, which happens literally in one of the best scenes early in the film. There are other inspired moments, for instance, the purchasing of a van, labeled The Death Van, from a seedy local car lot that has a backstory that will set you roaring hoarse after the sales pitch is finished. I don’t want to waste the joke here, but this van has hit some things and been part of some real chaos.

Heavy Trip (2018) - Movie Still — Courtesy of Music Box Films

There is a chance for the boys in black to break out of their mundane lives after a chance encounter with a music promoter in a scene that plays out so convenient, I think the filmmakers are having a joke against their own plot. This leads to Turo lying to his bandmates by telling them that they have been invited to play the Northern Damnation music festival in Norway and sets in motion a series of events that will ultimately lead to Turo having to face his sin.

As mentioned before, this is familiar stuff. Why does it work? First, the cast is very appealing. Turo is sweet in his soul and can scream like Satan through a microphone, but played with utter conviction. Xytrax (Max Ovaska) is the best character, a high functioning autistic who dresses up in face-paint like a sad Gene Simmons rips on the bass and prevents the group from being derivative with his encyclopedic knowledge of all things metal. Second, the film’s irreverence. Scenes involving reindeer carcasses being used as musical inspiration, a mix up involving men dressed as jihadists, choice projectile vomiting, and an inventive album cover photo involving a police high speed camera start to make up for the comfortable setup.

HEAVY TRIP is breezy entertainment and is recommended for fans of films like GARAGE DAYS, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN… THE FABULOUS STAINS, EAGLE VS. SHARK, LENINGRAD COWBOYS and THE COMMITMENTS. Most of those I would consider better films, but someone needed to fill that void with the cute movie about the down homey death metal band from Finland and this one certainly does it.