Adam Berg’s Black Crab (Svart Krabba) — based on Jerker Virdborg’s novel of the same name — is a Swedish action thriller set in a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by war. The film stars Swedish actress Noomi Rapace, Jakob Oftebro, Erik Enge, as well as Dar Salim and Ardalan Esmaili, who have Iranian roots. Black Crab offers beautiful landscapes of the Stockholm archipelago, which are haunting and brutal. However, the film poses a lot of questions regarding the setting and the characters, and the latter, which falls flat and becomes uninteresting, to say the least.
The film begins with Caroline Edh (Rapace) and her daughter Vanya (Stella Marcimain Klintberg) in a car when they are suddenly attacked by soldiers. Cut to the present day, the country is in extreme poverty and refugees swarm the area looking for food and their loved ones. Caroline gets selected to complete a mission by Raad (David Dencik) that depends on humanity’s survival. Raad briefs Caroline, Malik (Salim), Gravnik (Enge), Karimi (Esmaili), and Nyland (Oftebro) to carry mysterious capsules further south to a research centre, claiming that it will help end the war. As an experienced speed skater turned soldier, Caroline knows the risks of the mission but is persuaded when she learns that her daughter is at the research centre. After their base gets attacked by the enemy, the soldiers set out on their mission, as they skate during the night over the deadly, frozen sea.
Black Crab presents a post-apocalyptic world where civil war breaks out with an unseen enemy. As interesting as the premise sounds, the world of this movie isn’t clear from the very beginning. The audience is aware the country is at the brink of collapse and refugees are living in camps while military soldiers are sanctioning every aspect of this new world. The government doesn’t exist and everything is run by the military. As a viewer, it’s confusing as to why the world is being attacked by missiles. The audience knows there is an enemy with weapons of mass destruction, but who are they? The first half of the movie is great but as the story progresses, it’s clear that not even the characters know much about what’s going on outside of their base.
As Berg begins to establish the world, another issue arises. Apart from Caroline, the audience doesn’t know much about who the other characters are or how they ended up in that situation. All of them have a common goal: for this civil war to end. Once this war ends, Malik wants to find his brother and watch a football match with him and Karimi wants to find his girlfriend and marry her, but their base was bombed just a few days ago. Gravnik and Nyland’s goals are not mentioned. Black Crab becomes more unusual as the characters don’t introduce themselves to each other. There isn’t much room to feel sorry for the characters’ demise because the audience knows so little about the characters. Ultimately, nothing is interesting about the characters and their interactions.
Throughout the mission, they are strangers and immediately, they don’t trust each other. There are two elements of conflict in Black Crab: the characters and the frozen sea. After the group learns of the suicide mission, Karimi decides to leave and search for his girlfriend at the base that was recently bombed. The movie shows Karimi’s desire to go back, however, he gets caught trying to contact someone on the radio and the rest of the soldiers assume he works for the enemy. There is nothing that suggests or establishes Karimi as the suspicious character, and if there was one, Caroline accuses Nyland of some conspiracy. The subplot ends disappointingly, where Caroline, Malik, Gravnik, and Nyland realise the error in their assumption, but only Malik apologises.
The soldiers are presented with dangerous situations where their lives are in grave danger. Their commander, Forsberg (Aliette Opheim) accidentally falls under the ice caps and drowns. Without a second thought, Caroline dives in to grab the capsules in Forsberg’s bag and risks her life. The ice is the most dangerous place for the soldiers and since they are exposed to the enemy, it makes them easier targets. It’s not clear how these unseen and mysterious enemies can find them so easily, but the action scenes become repetitive after a while. The thing with shooting in snow or icy landscapes is the scenes are beautiful, however, since half of the movie is the soldiers skiing on thin ice. There isn’t anything unique shown in the shots.
Black Crab is frustratingly confusing. Berg directs a haunting, brutal, and scary movie that shows how open space can be the most dangerous place, regardless of its beauty. But the problem starts when the story doesn’t work on establishing the main conflict, that is, the civil war that made the world the way it is, and the characters’ importance to each other as well as, the audience. In the end, it feels like more questions need to be answered. Rapace, known for her performance as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo films, is as brilliant as ever. Rapace shows vulnerability in her performance, delivers with a powerful performance of grit and strength. There may never be an answer to all the unanswered questions in Black Crab, but one thing is for certain, the movie lacks certain elements of crucial storytelling.
