When I watch films from my own country, Norway, I would like to think that I watch them with an open mind. The reviews we get in out media are very often undeserved praise, the reason being that the media do not wish to offend the film industry, because we live in such a small country, and it would be suicide to give negative reviews to poor films.. And in some way or another, all Norwegian films are founded by the state. So, we like to support our film industry, even when we make poor films. But I don't care if I offend. I stem the tide, because I want to see better Norwegian films, "Reprise" is the only great Norwegians film I've seen as far as I can remember, and there is awfully lots of film that's supposed to be "Masterworks", witch is just not true. DeUsynlige is one of them.<br /><br />In the last years, the Norwegian film industry has produced films with with better style and technique than before. This holds true with DeUsynlige. But the content, however, is just not there. The acting was okay, the problem is with the director Poppe and especially the screenwriter. They just don't know how to tell a story! For me, It doesn't work at all. The level of writing really was humiliating. I think Norwegian film industry should just keep going making horror films, young people learning how to make their money back, learning to appeal and tell stories where we quickly get sympathy the characters, the basic stuff, before start to experiment with story structure, like in DeUsynlige, where they fail, and here is why.<br /><br />The problem is that act one is basically that we as an audience invest in the storyline of character Jan Thomas; being released from prison, getting a job at a church, meets his love interest, and then maybe 40 minutes in, the turning point involves Jan Thomas having to face the father of the kid he supposedly murdered. So I think, this is where the story will progress, act two, what now? The story falls flat, because there is nothing left to tell. Maybe because the momentum of the story really is in the past, before the story of the film. It's easy to sense bad writing when stories falls flat after the setup or the first act. What happens is you get bored, and instead you pick up all the flaws of the film, and this really happened to me. Why did I get bored? Goodbye, Jan Thomas, we switch protagonist to an insane Danish woman.<br /><br />It's not like other multi or plural protagonist films, where they establish the characters we will get acquainted in the first act. In this film, the new characters are introduced 40 minutes in. And they use terrible flashbacks that really don't tell us anything to try to make the switch work. And this time around, with these characters, they don't care to show us why we should care for them. The only thing is that we know that they lost their child eight years ago. With Jan Thomas, in the beginning, we have scenes of imprisonment and acts of violence against him, where they actually try to makes us feel sorry for him.. Also, his love interest, is shown helping a addict, which invites us to kind of like her. Cheap stuff yeah, but we can see that they actually try. We're not in that spirit invited to care for the Danish mother and her husband, and we follow them, I don't know, for the next 50 minutes! There's a plot about them moving to Danmark which goes nowhere! I keep wondering why they introduced the plot of them moving to Denmark. But bravo for one funny scene where the husband makes an excuse, and lies that he lost his wineglass on the ceiling, when it clearly was an act of anger. Otherwise we just don't care what happens.<br /><br />All the built up in the first act is thrown out the window. Too bad the screenwriter didn't have anything more to say about Jan Thomas's trials and tribulations, and don't know how to tell a full story. It's just two beginnings and one end. That's the biggest problem of the film, the Danish woman and her husband should have been a part of the film from the beginning on, they should be set-up properly and then gradually give us insight in their lives, to make the switch work. But no.<br /><br />The end shows us the return of Jan Thomas. Yeah we move from A to A, great character progression indeed! I mean this seriously because the middle of the film, strangely enough, lacks his presence. It sets out to be an emotional experience, but turns out to be a agonizingly flawed, awkward and silly film, going nowhere but up it's own ass.<br /><br />Furthermore, throughout the movie, the children character's are just props. They're stick figures. They have no POV, they're just objects that make the grownup characters feel guilty. That typical condescending thing. They're not children. They’re scary and soulless story props, making the story sort of evolve (one kid brainlessly causes the climax). It's not like how children are portrayed in the films of Moodysson or Kiarostami, the children characters in this film are so weak and unbelievable that we actually sit there and hope that they will die. This says more about the film, than me, okay? And we never learn why Jan Thomas kidnapped a child in the first place. For what reason? It's just "I'm gonna steal this thing here and make a run for it".<br /><br />The idea of telling this story with both points of view is interesting, and they've could've done a much better job. Too bad the execution was awful. Too bad Erik Poppe is an acclaimed Norwegian director, and will get away with making more of these "masterpieces" in the years to come.