No Rest for the Wicked review: a supernatural gay love story
Variety praises Danish film No Rest for the Wicked as a supernatural gay love story set in the 19th-century Faroe Islands. Kaspar Kalle's atmospheric feature, drawn from an 1884 Karl Heinrich Ulrichs tale, follows two men whose romance turns haunting—and ends with melancholy poignancy akin to Brokeback Mountain.
Key Takeaways
- No Rest for the Wicked screened at Fantasia Festival and runs 103 minutes.
- The film stars Egor Venned, Pilou Asbaek, and Sofia Nolsoe in a mid-19th-century Faroe Islands setting.
- Variety calls it an honorable addition to romantic ghost stories, with love triumphing through a literal haunting.
- It adapts Karl Heinrich Ulrichs' 1884 story "Manor," with a screenplay by Rasmus Birch and Kalle.
- Cinematography by Jacob Moller and a score by Hettarher underscore the film's stark, period atmosphere.
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What is No Rest for the Wicked about?
According to Variety's review, the story opens in 1862 with Baldur (Egor Venned), a taciturn young man living with his widowed mother Asla (Sofia Nolsoe). Fishing alone, he is engulfed by mysterious clouds and hears cries for help.
After hitting his head on a rock, Baldur is rescued by Helge (Pilou Asbaek), a sailor about 40 who was lost on an unfamiliar side of the island. Their tentative friendship turns passionate—to Asla's dismay—before a whaling ship docks and both men prepare to sign on as crew.
Maternal guilt keeps Baldur ashore. Helge sails alone, then returns too soon as one of many corpses from a shipwreck. Grieving, Baldur makes a blood wish that his lover "come back," and the tale takes a supernatural leap already hinted by visions and nightmares.
Why does rest for the wicked matter for queer cinema fans?
Kalle's film walks a murky line between love story and horror, Variety notes, but the sinister turns prove deliberate misdirection. Drawn from Ulrichs—a very early proponent for gay rights—the screenplay replaces crudely literal elements with more suggestive ones and pares dialogue for visual storytelling.
Cinematographer Jacob Moller makes the most of stark locations, backed by persuasive period design and a score by Hettarher with wordless choral passages. Variety compares the melancholy finish to Brokeback Mountain and All of Us Strangers.
Kalle also downplays explicit homophobia that might have made Asla a simplistic villain. She reads less as jealous interference than as a woman who does not want to be abandoned again after losing a husband to the sea.
How did Variety rate the cast and craft?
Model and Faroes native Venned makes his screen debut opposite the more experienced Asbaek. Variety says the newcomer holds his own, while Nolsoe provides strong support. Production is credited to SF Studios with the Danish Film Institute, Faroese Outlier Projects, and Truenorth; Charades handles world sales.
Reviewed online July 20, 2026, for Fantasia, the Danish- and Faroese-language drama is positioned as a handsomely atmospheric queer ghost romance rather than a straight horror outing. Love finally triumphs in No Rest for the Wicked—a denouement Variety calls both haunting and dependent on a literal haunting to arrive.
Villagers are drawn in when Asla grows alarmed enough to alert others: Helge's dug-up corpse proves disconcertingly warm and undecayed, and a contagion of sorts begins spreading. Variety says those horror cues ultimately serve a romance whose uneven qualities dissipate in melancholy poignancy.