There’s a forbidding air to the Faroe Islands, an isolated fishing community where No Rest for the Wicked is set. The year is 1862, and Baldur Joensen (Egor Venned) has a quiet, simple life. The young man lives with his religious, conservative, widowed mother Ásla (Sofia Nolsøe Mikkelsen) in a comfortable cottage, spending his time picnicking with her or fishing with the other men on the island.
But he yearns for something more.
The easy answer is that he wants to go explore the world. Despite being isolated, the islands are frequented by ships that stop for trade, and there are 19th-century equivalent seasonal workers who pass through, which provides Baldur with a glimpse of the outside world that he’s missing out on.
When Baldur rescues Danish man Helge (Pilou Asbæk) after the latter has an accident in the foggy waters, the young man’s life begins to expand. While the two aren’t fluent in the other’s language, they can communicate on a rudimentary level, and Baldur quickly becomes entranced by Helge’s transient stories. To say the other man is more worldly is an understatement. The appeal becomes more significant and complicated when Baldur and Helge begin to act on their mutual attraction, sneaking in bouts of lovemaking under Ásla’s nose.
Obviously this is where the film’s conflict lies, but screenwriter Rasmus Birch’s languid script takes its time, chronicling dinners and late-night talks between the men in order to develop their romance. As the intimacy deepens and Baldur becomes increasingly enamored, he imagines a life for himself away from the islands and his mother.
Ásla inevitably discovers what the men have been up to, but the issue truly comes to a head when Baldur declares his intent to ship off with Helge. Ásla protests, laying the emotional blackmail on thick to the point that her son relents, leaving Helge to go off on his own.
Then a massive storm strikes. And Helge dies. No Rest for the Wicked shifts gears dramatically because the dead man begins to come back to haunt Baldur – continuing their nocturnal dalliances with such intensity that Baldur’s body is left bloody.
No Rest for the Wicked is teased as a vampire narrative, but it is unlike other predatory queer horror texts. Helge’s return is damaging, yes, but it is clear that the intent is romantic; these are men whose love was cut short, and that connection persists after death via supernatural means. Of course, the other islanders don’t react as such when the truth comes out, resulting in some classic visual tropes of the subgenre, albeit with several intriguing subversions.
The film is more than content to take its time, though, which means that the hour and forty-minute runtime can occasionally feel narratively rudderless. When an unexpected development arises in the last act that dramatically affects the other townspeople, it’s genuinely exciting and unusual, but it also makes it clear how intimate and contained the story has been. We barely know these other characters, which makes their fates less involving to audiences.
It’s also challenging to distinguish between several of these men, a fact not helped by cinematographer Jacob Møller’s dim lighting. It’s candlelight romanticism, but there are several points where I was happy that the film was in Faorese because the subtitles helped to identify which character was which.
Writer/director Kasper Kalle has crafted a beautiful and atmospheric supernatural romance that capitalizes on the beauty of the Faroe Islands. Seriously, the scenery is so stunning that large swaths of the movie play like an advertisement for the tourism board. Aside from being gorgeous to look at, the film lives and dies based on the relationship between Baldur and Helge, which is romantic and forbidden in the film’s first half and melancholy and tragic in the back half.
It’s also quite hot, with great chemistry between the innocent, naïve Venned and the more experienced and worldly Asbæk. When Helge returns after the Biblical-level storm, the result is unnerving, sure, but it also feels like the universe correcting a misstep. In this capacity, the film plays like a sweeping historical romance about the lengths that true love will go to persist.
Despite the laggy pacing, due to a strong romantic component and the fascinating complications introduced in the film’s last act, No Rest for the Wicked is an easy recommend for fans of queer horror.
No Rest for the Wicked had its world debut at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.
