| Fear Me Not | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Kristian Levring |
| Produced by | Sisse Graum Jørgensen |
| Screenplay by | Anders Thomas Jensen Kristian Levring |
| Starring | Ulrich Thomsen Paprika Steen Emma Sehested Høeg Lars Brygmann |
| Cinematography | Jens Schlosser |
| Editing by | Pernille Bech Christensen |
| Distributed by | Nordisk Film |
| Release date(s) | December 19, 2008 |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
| Country | Denmark |
| Language | Danish |
Fear Me Not (Danish: Den du frygter) is a Danish psychological thriller film released in 2008, directed by Kristian Levring.[1] The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and was produced by Nordisk Film.[2]
Contents |
Mikael has taken leave from work because he thinks he needs a change in life. He stays at home with his wife Sigrid and daughter Selma. Sigrid's brother, Frederick, is a scientist and needs subjects to take an experimental anti-depressant, to see if there are side effects. Mikael takes the pills without telling his wife and daughter. He writes a diary about how he feels each day and about the effects. The pills make him gradually feel more free, as if he has no boundaries. He leaves the home his wife inherited from her father and goes to stay at his mother's old rural home.
Frederick's team shuts down the experiment after several of the subjects begin to exhibit aggressive and violent behavior, including Mikael. He still refuses to let go of the freedom he thinks the pills give him, and he secretly continues to take them. Mikael begins to cross boundaries without caring about the people he hurts in the process. He begins to resent his wife and starts to hurt her, first by scalding her in the shower by turning up the water heater, and later by releasing rats into the bedroom while she sleeps. He also coerces a young woman to expose herself to him while he gives her a ride, and he seduces Frederick's wife.
When Mikael prepares to confess to Frederik, Frederik reveals that Michael has received placebo pills all the time because he would not expose his brother-in-law to be unsafe medicines. Selma reads Mikael's diary, and in a panic Mikael locks her in the sauna when she threatens to tell her mother. Sigrid, who has been given a sleeping pill, awakens and fights with Mikael, but he punches her and locks her in the chest freezer. Mikael decides to run away, leaving his wife and daughter trapped. Soon after he leaves, Sigrid escapes from the freezer and lets Selma free.
The film ends with Mikael, who stands at a train station after visiting his mother in a nursing home. He expresses sadness at having left his family and notes that he is still trying to figure out when and why things began to go wrong for him, but the memories still are unpleasant to contemplate.