ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

This Norway-set Danish dark comedy finds middle-aged Danish man Martin (Rasmus Bjerg) going through an extreme midlife crisis: he has abandoned his wife (Sofie Gråbøl as Anne) and two daughters — who think he is on a business trip — for life in a Norwegian forest. He is clad in furs and hunts with a bow and arrow, but living off the land isn’t working out too well for him, as after he vomits up a meal of a frog, he heads to a nearby gas station and convenience store to try to barter food for an ax. Martin isn’t very good at picking up on clues, either, when an injured man with a bag filled with money (Zaki Youssef as Musa) crosses his path.

Director Thomas Daneskov, who cowrote the screenplay with Morten Pape, goes more for quirky humor than scathing social commentary, but the balance is fine enough to make Wild Men an entertaining watch. Martin is not the kind of protagonist for whom it is easy to root, but Bjerg gives an intriguing performance as this man-child who finds out that the titular lifestyle is more difficult than he imagined — especially when local lawman Øyvind (Bjørn Sundquist) and his rather inept underlings get involved, without the aid of a police dog that always seems to have the day off.

Wild Men screens as part of Glasgow Film Festival, which takes place March 2–13, 2022 in Glasgow, Scotland. For more information, visit https://glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-film-festival.

Blue Finch Film Releasing are pleased to present the UK premiere screenings of Wild Men at Glasgow Film Festival, running from 2–13 March 2022.