A symphony of snores could be heard throughout the cinema during Kristian Petri’s poorly plotted and limply performed Bad Faith, a reassuring sign that I wasn’t the only one who found this supposed crime thriller from Sweden not in the least bit thrilling.

The film’s ludicrous setup requires you to suspend all your disbelief as disillusioned Sweed Mona (Sonja Richter) stumbles upon the latest victim of the prolific Bayonet Killer. Rather than call the police, Mona instead bloodies her hands by touching the corpse, says nothing to defend her innocence when two passers-by witness her hovering over the body, and most perplexingly, heads off to a work function without bothering to wash off the blood. Then, later that night, she chances upon yet another grisly crime scene, because murder victims apparently outnumber the living in Sweden. This time, however, the man is still alive. So what does Mona do? Nothing, of course.

Supposedly shaken by the experience — with Richter’s disinterested performance, it can be hard to tell — Mona then heads to a nearby Church where her prayers are disrupted by a creepy-eyed stranger named Frank (Jonas Karlsson). Because of their shared disconnect from greater society — not to mention the viewer — the two become intimate, yet their relationship is strained when Mona grows more and more obsessed with finding the elusive Bayonet Killer.

The icy atmosphere established by Hoyte Van Hoytema’s wide-angle cinematography is just about the only thing this pretentious and illogical film has to offer. The biggest mystery here is not the whodunit narrative, it’s how Magnus Dahlström’s screenplay – unsurprisingly his first – managed to survive the development process with its comatose characters, pedestrian storyline and gaping plot holes.

Unenviably tasked with making sense of Dahlström’s screenplay is director Kristian Petri, who loses out to the cinema’s air conditioner when it comes to delivering chills during the film’s ineffective climax. If he’s going to allow his actors to sleepwalk their way through the whole ordeal, it seems only fair that the audience be permitted to as well.

–

Bad Faith screens as part of the 2011 Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival. Read all of our BAFF11 coverage here.

Follow the author Anders Wotzke on Twitter.