The basic story of a young criminal not quite living up to his won ideals of “not to give a damn” sidesteps out of his criminal career while dragging his younger brother into it, could have been interesting. Unfortunately the implementation is simply not good enough. As so often with Danish movies, there is little appreciation for detail thus leaving us with hoodlums talking like they’ve done time at a business academy rather than a prison. Dialects completely out of here and idiosyncratic bikers without bikes or even character for that matter. An ever accelerating surrealism towards the end doesn’t help to clear the slow pace of this film but it does give a glimpse of what the story could have unfolded to become.

It is an adaptation of the Greek tragedy Medea from Euripides, a version where the Gods willing and intervations are absent. Medea is the tragic character that after helping Jason in the Voyage of the Argonauts (myth says that she has even sacrificed her own brother for Jason’s success), she gets from him only betrayal, as he arranges to marry the King’s of Corinth daughter. The king decides to exile Medea, as she is a danger for his daughter happiness, but Medea asks from him just a day… before she goes outside the borders. That day Medea gets her revenge…

An old sanatorium is deteriorating in an isolated forest in the mountains. The elderly janitor is still living there to ensure that no one access the dangerous building. Five contract workers have taken on the task of tracking the huge building for hazardous waste before it’s demolished. Over 300 rooms and kilometres of pipelines have to be screened in three days. They realize that the job is more than a search for asbestos and mercury when they encounter the building’s frightening past. Water is gushing from the old pipes, and brings the work to a halt. An attempt to close the water intake leads them to the dark cellar, where they discover the horrible secrets from the sanatoriums past. You can demolish a building, but never remove the past.