The Conference - An Interesting Swedish Horror Slasher Movie

Looking through the various streaming services yesterday, I came across this new movie on Netflix which did not seem to be highlighted. But as the premise sounded interesting, I decided to give this a try. Now I'll get to it then.

Brief Story Line

A group of employees went for a conference in a rather remote place to discuss on their project to build a mall and also for team building. They consisted of their supervisor Ingela (Maria Sid), project leader Jonas (Adam Lundgren - Chernobyl mini series etc), Lina (Katia Winter - Blood & Treasures TV series etc) who just returned after having breakdown, Amir (Amed Bozan), Nadja (Bahar Pars) and few others. 

However their meeting did not really go with plan as there were plenty of heated discussions and temper ran high among them. But worst of it all when a mysterious person came to the location and started to kill them one by one.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

OK so I thought the film would take a while to get to the good part, especially since the beginning seemed focused on showing the people who went for the conference. But turned out it only took less than 15 minutes. The film also showed the dynamics among the employees with a bit of humor especially with the appearance of the most annoying person Kaj (Christoffer Nordenrot) who tried so hard to be funny, and the obnoxious Jonas. This was probably the reason the movie put under the categor of horror comedy.

Anyway what surprised me the most was the killing which was quite brutal and violent. I did not expect them to be shown quite graphically here. And the background music were OK with few nice songs. The sound effects were pretty good as well, which even gave quite frightening effect to my wife who was watching something else. Some of the special effects were quite decent and gave the desired effect of the violence.

The story was actually pretty standard where a group of people in a secluded area had to fight off a vicious murderer and they were unable to call for help (I believe it to be slasher genre). But the interesting part was the interaction among the employees who were portrayed nicely by these actors and actresses. Aside from Katia Winter, I was unfamiliar with the names or faces of the cast as the film was Swedish production and I never watched any movies/series from that country despite there were several of them available on Netflix. Again this is what I loved about Netflix as it gave me the chance to expand my horizon by watching entertaining films from other countries. 

I noticed in the opening scene that the movie was based on the book of the same title Konferensen written by Mats Strandberg. It was directed by Patrik Edlund who also served as co-writer with Thomas Moldestad and Strandberg himself, so I guess the movie got the benefit of having the same vision of the novel's writer. I am not sure whether critics are happy with the movie but as a casual audience, I was quite satisfied by it, except the ending that I felt could have been more to my expectation. Anyway if you are interested in a slasher movie happening on a secluded place on a group of people who looked like employees in real life with their bickering and a bit of office politics too, then you should give this a try.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars