Two men fly into the Copenhagen airport. The second one (Udo Kier) desperately tries to track down the first one. When the first man attacks a lone woman in an airport parking garage, the entire city is suddenly blacked out.
These men soon inspire two fevered searches. The first man (but not the woman) is found dead in the garage exhibiting conditions similar to the Ebola virus. A young ambitious doctor, Soren (Ole Lemmeke), is determined to discover whether this is some new kind of virus. His search leads him to the only other known victim of like condition, a boy who died in Romania two days earlier.
The second search is conducted by Danish police for Udo, who apparently fire-bombed a hospital’s children’s ward in, uh, Romania two days earlier. Hmmm… Will the two searches come together? Are they connected? Who could be responsible for all this death? Could it be… SATAN?!?!?!
Apparently, even Denmark was not immune to the end-of-the-millennium thriller. Directed by Anders Ronnow-Klarlund and produced by Lars Von Trier’s production company, Zentropa, “Besat” is a taut little thriller. It’s missing something, though. There’s just not enough “evil” on display. When I think of “The Exorcist”, I remember the weird stuff popping up pretty frequently so that every 10 to 20 minutes you say, “What the hell was that?” I think “Besat” needs more of that. The real entity of evil doesn’t really appear until halfway through the final act. Until then, the movie is all search and unraveling the mystery of what is actually happening. Don’t get me wrong. The search is gripping enough, but all the build-up doesn’t get the kind of payoff the audience may expect. The story would lead you to believe that you’re watching something closer to “End of Days” (yeah, I know, that sucked) but what you really end up with is the Danish version of “The Hidden”.
