Gudstjänst (In the Name of God)
Theodor (Linus Wahlgren), a priest with a rural Swedish parish, finds himself officiating at a mass for four elderly congregants. In a moral quandary bad news/good news situation, Theodor’s wife Felicia (Lisa Henni) collapses with most likely fatal sepsis and his old mentor Jonas (Thomas Hanzon) shows up again claiming to be able to bestow the ability to receive miracles – providing he has the blood of a beheaded dove squirted in his face and he agrees to join something Old Testamenty called the true priesthood. It’s only after this rigmarole that Jonas explains the deal – in order to cure a good person like Felicia, Theodor has to murder a bad person like the local just-paroled rapist (the Småstorp Ripper) who Jonas happens to have tied up in a barn. When the deed is done, Felicia recovers while Theodor is praying at her bedside and suddenly his church is full of true believers … but the bloody bargain plainly is going to have a major downside as the local news story attracts the interest of Adam (Charlie Gustafsson), a congregant with a sick wife, and Erik (Vilhelm Blomgren), a ‘cult-buster’ who has an inkling that something is very wrong in Småstorp.
Written and directed by Ludvig Gür, In the Name of God is a cautionary tale which initially gets chills from foreshadowing the path the decent if slightly wishy-washy protagonist takes when blessed (or cursed) with the power of life and death and nudged, nagged, tempted or guilt-tripped into becoming essentially a serial killer for Our Lord. It’s a potent short story premise, very well acted by Wahlgren, but the film develops in interesting ways as Adam and Erik get involved with their very different (but as it happens entwined) agendas. It moves from a kind of Scandi-noir understatement – a side effect of being a true priest seems to be that the police ignore your crimes – into more gothic horror territory with white-robed cultists and gruesome ceremonies in graveyards. A very satisfying horror movie.
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