Vi dör i natt / We Die Tonight

 

Richard Holm: Vi dör i natt / We Die Tonight (SE 2025). The commando unit of a drug cartel.

Country and year: Sweden 2025

Producer(s): Christian Magdu

Director: Richard Holm

Writer: Robin Sherlock Holm, Christin Magdu

Cinematographer: Andreas Wessberg

Music: Anders Herrlin, Jennie Löfgren

Soundtrack: Gyllene Tider: "När vi två blir en" ("Jag vill känna din kropp emot min") (Per Gessle) (1980).

Cast: Amada Lindh, Christian Magdu, Kristoffer Joner, Emilia Roosmann, Clara C. Drake, Jonathan Fredriksson, Ia Langhammer, Kardo Razzazzi

Loc: butiken Nisses i Rockhammar (Västmanland) utanför Örebro.

Duration: 90 min

Language: Swedish

Subtitles: English

Format: DCP

Night Visions (NV) Maximum Halloween 3025

Viewed at Kinopalatsi 9, Helsinki, 23 Nov 2025

NV 2025: "Uunituore We Die Tonight on armoton kauhutrillerivyörytys, joka tuo home invasion -teeman tavaratalomiljööseen ruotsalaisen kansankodin maaseudulla. Viimeksi lähes kymmenen miljoonan euron katastrofitrilleri Kiirunan (2023) ohjannut Richard Holm tekee elokuvia, jollaisia länsinaapurista ei ole totuttu näkemään.

Hämärtyvä ilta syrjäisessä automarketissa saa pahaenteisen käänteen, kun vakavasti haavoittunut mies rojahtaa kyljelleen kaupan lattialle. Hänen mukanaan sisään sysännyt hysteerinen nainen vaatii henkilökuntaa lukitsemaan ovet välittömästi. Kaksikolla on kuulemma kannoillaan rikollisjoukko, joka aikoo saada haluamansa.

Ollaan kaukana kaikesta, joten poliisin ja ambulanssin saapumista saadaan odotella. Myymälään telkeytyneiden työntekijöiden ja asiakkaiden neuvokkuus ja keskinäinen dynamiikka joutuvat koetukselle, kun maskimiehet piirittävät rakennuksen.

Yksi Holmin esikuvista on eittämättä John Carpenterin pienten puitteiden klassikko Hyökkäys poliisiasemalle (1976). Intensiivinen tykittely yltyy välillä niin reippaaksi ja graafiseksi, että mieleen tulee pikemminkin öisen varastohallin kauhuista ammentanut amerikkalaistylytys Hunt Her, Kill Her (NV kevät 2023).

Oivalliseen roolituksen tutuin kasvo on The Wave -katastrofispektaakkelin norjalainen pääosatähti Kristoffer Joner, joka tekee mieleenpainuvaa työtä sankarin sisältään löytävänä alkoholistina. Hallitusti rytmitetty, välillä ihokarvat aidosti pystyyn pakottava kokonaisuus on joidenkin paikalliskriitikoiden mukaan myös ”eräs kaikkien aikojen verisimmistä Ruotsissa tehdyistä elokuvista”." (NV 2025)

NV 2025 QUOTATION COCKTAIL:

”Intense, dark and unexpectedly funny — Certainly stands out in the Swedish film landscape”

– Alexander Svensson / MovieZine

”An intense, claustrophobic action thriller”

– Tommy Pedersen / Filmparadiset

”[Director] Richard Holm really knows his way when it comes to ultra violence and splatter — The highly professional effects are well-made and realistic”

– Pidde Andersson / Topraffel!

”In a quiet town, a routine day turns into a siege when store employees and customers barricade themselves to protect a wounded man fleeing a brutal gang. Francki, new to the job and secretly in love with the employee Ellie, takes the desperate step of locking the doors, sealing their fate as the gang surrounds the building. With no way out, the group faces a brutal decision: hand the wounded man over or risk everything to protect a person they barely know. As the night deepens, violence erupts, trust fractures, and morality crumbles. Everyone is forced to confront the darkest parts of themselves in order to survive.”

– Production notes – NV 2025 QUOTATION COCKTAIL

AA: Richard Holm's Vi dör i natt belongs to a noble lineage of cinema, including Rio Bravo, The Night of the Living Dead and Assault on Precinct 13. From a wider perspective, it has been said that The Iliad and The Odyssey are blueprints for much of all fiction. Vi dör i natt belongs to The Iliad legacy. It is a siege story.

Conscious of genre tradition, Richard Holm uses it as a framework for something special. The location is a supermarket, but unlike George A. Romero in his shopping mall saga Dawn of the Dead, Holm is not making a satire of consumer society. On the contrary, he paints a portrait of the supermarket as a heart of a community where most people know each other, and salesperople know the customers' preferences. Holm introduces interesting glimpses into management and control methods and the practice of confiscating the personnel's mobile phones into a safe deposit box.

A drug cartel is extending its tentacles inside the folkhemmet ("the people's home"). One of its operators is on the run, and he is the sole possessor of a fatal crypto code (the MacGuffin of the film). The criminal organization has a remarkable, well-armed and ruthless commando unit. Some plot turns remind us of the preposterous ideas of Stieg Larsson.

Vi dör i natt is an excellent action movie, but it is also psychologically complex and intriguing. Baked in is also a one-sided love affair. Francki (Christian Magdu) is a middle-aged bachelor, a nerd who has taken a job at Nisses just to be in the vicinity of Ellie (Amanda Lindh). Francki is bullied by his workmates, and Ellie finds him a bit creepy. During the course of the the saga, Francki grows into a true gallant knight and earns Ellie's respect, if nothing else.

Ellie is the one who finds Isa (Emilia Roosmann) buried underground, and on her trail Dominic (Kamjar Rezaei) finds his way to Nisses - followed by the whole masked paramilitary unit of the drug cartel (see photo above).

Vi dör i natt, like Ben Wheatley's Kill List which I saw two days ago, is a crime film that turns into a horror movie because of the extreme level of the violence.

Richard Holm channels contemporary concerns, such as the threat to the Nordic welfare society posed by international drug crime, and the geopolitical change which means that Nordic peoples must be militarily prepared like never since WWII.

Above all, Vi dör i natt impresses as pure cinema. During Kill List I was thinking that cinema must have energy above all. Likewise, Vi dör i natt has an extraordinary power charge. 

It is the best Nordic horror film that I have seen.