Lords of Chaos (2018)

Jonas Åkerlund's dramatization of the early Norwegian black metal scene arrives with a smirk and a body count. The casting reflects the historically homogeneous milieu it depicts, which is to say the ensemble is uniformly pale, and the film makes no gesture toward correcting the record. A gay man is murdered by Faust, rendered as a grim crime beat lifted from the police blotter, never as advocacy. Ann-Marit drifts through as girlfriend and occasional voice of reason, though the film remains a male-centric chronicle of ego, arson, and knife work. There is no racial consciousness on offer, and none is possible in a story this monochrome.

The church burnings are nihilistic vandalism, not ecological lament. Anyone seeking a climate parable here will leave empty-handed. Body positivity fares worse. The film serves up self-mutilation, a suicide photographed for posterity, and necklaces fashioned from a friend's skull. It is the negation of that entire project. Dead's self-destruction is staged as morbid theater, pathology without a diagnostic label, and the film never reaches for a mental-health framework to soften it.

There is a whiff of anti-commercial posturing. The Black Circle sneers at posers, Euronymous runs a DIY label and a record shop, and the whole enterprise defines itself against mainstream success. This is attitude, not economics. The film bills itself as a fictionalized account and invents relationships and anachronisms freely, though the liberties serve dramatization instead of ideology. Åkerlund observes his subjects with detached amusement and declines to sermonize. Nobody learns anything. The credits roll.