Danish director Kristian Levring, best known for his Dogme '94 King Lear adaptation The King is Alive, has fashioned a disquieting, if unfocused, thriller in Fear Me Not. Noteworthy for its general lack of Dogme dogma, Levring's creeper doubles as a vehicle for the talented Nordic actor Ulrich Thomsen and is, to my knowledge, the only Scandinavian reimagining of Nicholas Ray's Technicolor masterpiece Bigger than Life in existence.

Playing a dull but loving father and husband, Thomsen never seeks to command the grandeur of James Mason's tyrannical paterfamilias. Rather, Thomsen's is a subtle study in concentrated psychosis formed through chauvinism and a rampant ego. Mikael (Thomsen), emasculated by an absence from work and depressed for no given reason, agrees to take part in a medical trial for a new anti-depressant, administered by his brother-in-law. He immediately becomes self-aware and begins allowing himself to press the bars of his cage a bit -- he flirts with his sister-in-law and refers to himself as the Incredible Hulk with his teen daughter (Emma Sehested Høeg).

As the film goes on, Levring and cinematographer Jens Schlosser begin to frame Thomsen more off-center, moving away from the conventional framing of the film's first quarter. It reflects Mikael's deteriorating sanity and his outlook towards his family and, working with the script by Levring and Andres Thomas Jensen (The Duchess, Brothers), it also causes the audience to scrutinize actions and speech in the same way Mikael does. Was that pause before shaking his daughter's boyfriend's hand the drug or just sizing-up? Was he being snide or just passive aggressive when he complained about cancelled plans?

Mikael's wife Sigrid, played by the brave Paprika Steen, suffers the brunt of her husband's increasingly intense mind games but it's a harrowing scene wherein Mikael toys with and then begins to molest a young hitchhiker that signifies that the one-time bored husband has fully mutated. The last quarter of the film springs a decent twist that turns the film's message on its head (sort of) and drags a bit more complex concept of psychology into the relationship between Mikael and his wife. For Mikael, his decision to act out is an act of catching up on lost time. The psychological torture of his working wife is nothing but retribution for turning him into a boring average man. One must wonder if we preemptively justify our behavior and actions simply because we can in the world of mental deterioration.

Purposefully, I suspect, Fear Me Not is defined more by its atmospheric fright than it is by any sense of character or ambition. The filmmakers have sought to project a hazy, lugubrious world view and in this area they have succeeded admirably. What the film lacks is a sense of relative cause-and-effect from Mikael's actions. We are distanced from Mikael's point of view but are not allowed to see or feel any reaction from the other characters either. Moody, if a bit conceptually conventional, Fear Me Not reaches for palpable psychosis but, in the end, achieves only meandering dread.

Aka Den du frygter.