Hysteria
2020 · 6m · Sweden
Directed by Anssi Määttä
Genres: dark comedy, horror, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
When a dense and dangerous fog rises in the middle of a national panic, Hannele locks herself inside her car while her friend remains stuck outside, forcing her to decide what to do.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A film that yanks the moral ground out from under you by making isolation and self-preservation the punchline—Määttä refuses to let you decide who's right, which is exactly what makes it sting. Dark comedy that doesn't announce itself, horror that lives in the space between panic and absurdity.
Määttä's control of tone and framing recalls the Scandinavian tradition of moral ambiguity through restraint; the fog-as-metaphor is economical rather than showy, and the film's refusal of catharsis positions it firmly in a lineage of Nordic unease.
The entire film hinges on the decision to keep the camera locked on Hannele's face and the car interior while the crisis unfolds outside as muffled chaos—that choice to compress the horror into reaction rather than spectacle is what makes six minutes feel like a pressure chamber.