An Icelandic director who trusts weather more than plot. At home, in Trapped, a blizzard does the frightening and it works; in Hollywood the same instincts have been spent on thrillers that did not need them.
Fi1m perspective
Early in Trapped (2015) the picture goes almost entirely white. The only sound is wind, a figure walks out into it, and nothing follows. We sat forward without meaning to, and nothing the murderer did in the nine episodes that followed got the same response from us. That is Baltasar Kormákur's habit: put a person in front of weather and let the weather act. He has done it with a blizzard in a fjord, with the sea in The Deep (2012) and a mountain in Everest (2015), and the reason it works is that he does not push it. The snow keeps going sideways past the window while two people talk quietly inside.
He came to directing from acting, most of the 1990s in Icelandic theatre, and it shows in how little his casts perform. 101 Reykjavik (2000), which he wrote, produced and starred in as well as directed, got him noticed abroad. Jar City (2006), from an Arnaldur Indriðason novel, was a considerable success at home, and The Deep took a real survival story and told it plainly. Then Hollywood: Contraband (2012), 2 Guns (2013), Everest. He went back to Iceland for television with Trapped, which he created, and Katla (2021), and to smaller drama with Touch (2024), adapted from an Icelandic novel. He produces as well, through RVK Studios, so the Icelandic work carries his name in more than one place.
The Icelandic work is the work. Ólafur Darri Ólafsson is the reason to watch Trapped; Kormákur has now cast him three times and we can see why. Jóhann Jóhannsson's score keeps to low strings and a drone and stays out of the storms entirely, which is the right decision and not an obvious one. The weakness is the same one each time: plot. Writing with Sigurjón Kjartansson and Clive Bradley, Kormákur hands nearly everyone in the town a secret, and by the middle of the season they arrive roughly one an hour and pull Andri away from the body in the water. Five directors share the season, and the look holds where the pacing does not.
The American films are the caveat. 2 Guns was received as a competent thriller with nothing much under it, and we have no quarrel with that reading; a director whose best instinct is to stand still and let the cold do the work is not the obvious man for a buddy action film. Everest is the exception that makes sense, a mountain full of people who cannot get down, which is Trapped with altitude.
Start with Trapped, and give it four episodes before the secrets start arriving on schedule. When they do, watch the windows. The weather keeps its end of the bargain.
Biography
Baltasar Kormákur is an Icelandic actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Reykjavík in 1966, he trained at the Iceland University of the Arts. He began his career in theatre, performing and directing at the National Theatre of Iceland before transitioning to film.
He wrote, directed, produced and starred in his feature debut 101 Reykjavík (2000). Subsequent directing credits include The Sea (2002), Jar City (2006), which won the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, The Deep (2012), Contraband (2012), 2 Guns (2013) and Everest (2015). He created, directed and wrote episodes of the television series Trapped (2015). He founded the production companies Blueeyes Productions and RVK Studios.
