Reviews of Svärtan (2026) and related work
- Document: “Bakom Svärtan” (2026)
Svärtan (2026
)
Seen in 2026.
In the summer of 1985, seven friends are on a small island and around the age of 14, in the periphery of Stockholm’s archipelago, where police investigate an unexplained death. It turns out it’s a mermaid, or so they think. It’s really a siren.
Svärtan is based on a 2023 book by John Ajvide Lindqvist. As usual with this author, the genre is horror, the theme is peripeteic empathy and the central motif is a popular type of supernatural creature. As in Stranger Things (2016) and a hundred other stories, puberty correlates well with that peripety, to the point of formula. This adaptation to television goes heavy on the Spielberg vibes. The only thing that prevents it from double-dipping fully into the summer-murder-mystery genre too is the fact that “Axelsson”, the plainclothes policeman investigating the death of a local youth, is alone in doing so, and speaks softly.
Main director Björn Stein seems to understand the pitfalls of putting supernatural horror, a police procedural, and En kärlekshistoria (1970) in superposition. The show negotiates its formulae in a curious way, which I think is ultimately effective. Protagonist Johannes, a capital-R Romantic at heart, is shocked that some of his friends are unmoved by the supernatural element of the plot. The creature they find has so much screen time, and its anatomy is so modest, that it must be intended to achieve realism through sheer persistence, eschewing The Fantastic (1970) on the level of the presentation, while embracing it on the level of Johannes’s narration. In the end, he regards himself as the only evidence of the supernatural, which is, of course, no evidence at all.
‣ “Bakom Svärtan” (2026)
Seen in 2026.