Lords of Chaos

2019, 1080hd

Johnny's comments:

Lords of Chaos is a drama about the birth of Norwegian Black Metal in the 1980s. Euronymous (Rory Culkin) is obsessed with metal and with his band Mayhem he goes about creating a new metal musical genre. But, the band doesn't have a lead singer so they put out an ad to find one and they do in the Swedish 'Dead' (Jack Kilmer), who has the perfect voice for Euronymous's vision but is also incredibly depressed and self-destructive. After a successful show where Dead cuts himself up very badly, the next morning Dead (rather graphically) kills himself and is found by Euronymous where he finds Dead's death as the perfect point to expand his vision to a music store and label as well as the perfect cover image.

Now Mayhem needs a new lead singer and along comes 'Varg' (Emory Cohen) who Euronymous thinks is a poser but he keeps making all the right moves and he is also ambitious and extremely loyal to Euronymous, to the point that if he says to do something, Varg does it, like burning down a church to get promotion for his music. Varg continues to burn down churches eventually with Euronymous tagging along and then he jokes about killing someone, which Varg does to a man who propositions him. Euronymous becomes incredibly disturbed by Varg behaviour but not because of what he's doing. Instead he's more worried about him leaving the band. Euronymous hooks up with photographer/groupie Ann-Marit (Sky Ferreira) who pushes him to move onto other things just as Varg goes public to the media about his deeds. Varg becomes increasingly paranoid about Euronymous which is not going to end well for one of them.

Gotta admit I'm no metal fan or a fan of the movies of Jonas Åkerlund (Spun and the recent Polar) but this was a pretty engrossing movie albeit with some unnecessarily graphic scenes (that suicide scene is something else). Both Culkin and Cohen are quite good, you never really know the true motives of Varg (there's a few hints at Nazism which are brushed off quickly) and there's enough (possibly made up) history of Norwegian metal to keep fans of the genre happy. A far more interesting movie than Åkerlund's previous movies and surprisingly well done.

Sky Ferreira film clip (collage below)

unidentified film clip (sample below)