Night vision

 

SPOILER WARNING

"Beck - Spår i mörker" (also known as "Beck 2 - Spår i mörker") is a 1997 Swedish film (or strictly speaking a Scandinavian-German co-production). Police officer Martin Beck is a fictional character developed by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, but the film isn´t based on their crime novels. "Beck - Spår i mörker" features Peter Haber, Mikael Persbrandt and other famous Swedish actors. 

And now, the subjective part...

Almost 30 years later, the film comes across as very strange. It has a noir and cyberpunk feeling, but also concentrates heavily on Beck´s strained private relationships (which are much more mundane). One running gag is that Beck always has to break off his planned vacation?! Beck´s constant sidekick Gunvald Larsson comes across as "the crazy cop", while almost everyone else is incompetent. The plot itself was *extremely* unrealistic back in 1997, almost to the point of science fiction. Sweden was a much safer place 30 years ago. Today? You tell me.

Beck, Gunvald and Beck´s love interest Lena Klingström investigate a string of bizarre murders in the Stockholm metro. The assassins have hacked the security system and can turn off the lights and the power at will. Indeed, they seem to live in the tunnels. Curiously, no motive for the killings is discernable and the only clue is a Internet symbol meaning "death"...

It turns out that the murders are part of a computer game called "Final Doom", in which the players have to kill real people in order to "reach the next level". It´s never explained what this could possibly mean, but it´s heavily implied that the teenagers playing the game are actually a nihilistic cult. "Beck - Spår i mörker" ends with an American reporter revealing that a similar string of killings have been reported from New York. The cult is worldwide and presumably web-based. 

I suppose this noir film did tap into real fears about the Internet which existed back in 1997, long before most people even had access to the damn thing. Today, we know what happened. Violent cults (such as the notorious 764) do indeed thrive on the dark web. Also, youth gangs in Sweden recruit children on-line to carry out murders. It´s hard to believe that things will take a sudden turn for the better. In that sense, the high strangeness of "Beck - Spår i mörker" feels almost prophetic. 

Thankfully, the metro in Stockholm is still relatively safe!