SXSW 2024- Natatorium Review- A Stunning Horror-Laced Family Drama

To English fans, horror movies named Natatorium instantly evoke Erika Christensen’s screeching stalker in the cheesy but entertaining Swimfan. Helena Stefánsdóttir’s Icelandic horror-laced drama is not that. It is far more nuanced and exceeds every expectation. The sumptuous creeping horror slinks behind closed doors and hides in conversations dripping with subtext. Natatorium, showing at SXSW 2024 today, is an unsettling look at a decades-old family secret that refuses to stay hidden regardless of how much everyone tries to ignore it.

When sweet and sunny Lilja arrives at the perfectly curated and maintained estate of her estranged grandparents, she is obviously in way over her head. Her arrival is met with a chilly reservation and an uncertainty that can’t be explained. This house of horrors contains, as one would expect, a pool in the basement. That basement should come with a warning, although, as we later learn, nowhere is really safe. Lilja arrives by bus without her father’s knowledge and goes to her grandparents’ home to stay while she is trying out for a local musical troupe. With her cello and optimism in tow, she is an instant fly in the ointment of their carefully maintained existence.

A trio of powerful, magnetic women are at the forefront of Natatorium. Lilja(Ilmur María Arnarsdóttir) is unbridled exuberant and naivete, while her Aunt Vala(Stefania Berndsen) is weary and defiant. Lilja’s father, Magnus(Arnar Dan Kristjánsson), calls her to retrieve his daughter once he learns where she is. His reaction is strangely worried. Vala is equally concerned about Lilja staying with her grandparents, but no one says why. Áróra, Eurovision Song Concert: The Story of Fire Saga’s Elin Petersdottir is at the center of it all. She is riveting and magnetic from her first word. She is both fevered and chilly in equal measures and for good reason.

These three women are the power brokers in Natatorium. They are the wielders of imaginary swords and conveyors of terrible deeds. Vala refuses to be defined by her childhood and family and rebels in little ways. She runs a successful apothecary doling out tinctures and herbs. She drinks alcohol and makes jokes, and yet her defiance has limits. So traumatized by what happened to her twin sister all the years ago, she would rather go along than rock the boat. Her jokes that she is the town witch rankle her mother, whose rigid, self-styled religion isn’t compatible.

The Christian adjacent rituals and atonements are heavy on punishment and pessimism. Rules must be followed, and there are consequences to even the most minor indiscretions, even if no one knows they’ve broken a rule. Áróra is God in this place, and everything gets sucked into the black hole of her fanaticism. Lilja is youth and innocence in the face of quiet menace. Áróra is a zealot with such tight control over her family that there is no room for dissent. She stalks her prey, read family, with ever-watchful judgemental eyes. She is the unquestioned ruler of this tribe and everything that happens within her house’s walls.

In contrast, all of the men in Nataorium are primarily passive. The men in this family have lost the agency to make change in one way or another. Magnus clearly ran far and fast and has no interest in revisiting his parents, while Kalli(Jónas Alfreð Birkisson) is a tragic Christ-like character who is rotting away in his childhood room. Why he knowingly allows his mother to “care” for him isn’t entirely clear. Her grip on him is unrelenting; he has simply given up fighting. Munchausen Syndrome, by proxy, seems to be the mental condition here, and yet that only paints part of the unnerving picture.

Vala might think she is the witch, but her mother has plenty of sway over all the men in her life. Her husband, Grímur(Valur Freyr Einarsson), is an oblivious, dottering presence except for the alarmed glances he gives when Áróra takes an interest in Lilja. He is warm and kind, cooking, cleaning, and errand running for his Queen. He sleeps just fine at night despite the tragedy all around him. Grímur is another male figure who appears to have given up and succumbed to Áróra’s authority.

Unspeakable things have happened in this house and will happen again before the film ends. Despite people coming and going, the outside world barely exists. Communication is avoided almost as a life philosophy in this family. The event that claimed the youngest daughter’s life and bedridden Kalli’s mysterious ailment is never discussed full stop. An almost pathological desire to avoid delving into the deep waters of depravity surrounding the faux medical treatments that only seem to make him worse. Kalli has become Áróra disturbing masterwork. She presents rather than introduces Lilja to Kalli as if she is showing him off. He is her project, masterpiece, and zoo animal. Lilja is so inexperienced she fails to see what is happening. It takes an outsider, Magnus’s girlfriend Irena(Kristín Pétursdóttir), who shows up late in the proceedings, to state the obvious. If he is so sick, why isn’t he in the hospital?

Denial is the standard in this family, which insists the pool in the basement has been emptied even when Lilja says she swam there. They refuse to go down and look and instead repeat their mantra as if they are trying to make it so with their words alone. A fishbowl is a symbolic reminder that not all water is life. The pool itself is an inky abomination of restrained glamour.

It’s a weird space of black curtains, black water, and arresting gold. No one should ever want to swim there. If a pool had been in Jennifer Lopez’s The Cell, it might have looked like this. It’s somewhere between a vivid nightmare and Art Deco. The set design by Snorri Freyr Hilmarsson alone is reason enough to see Natatorium. The upstairs is stark and minimalistic, while Kalli’s room is stuffed with the remnants of adolescents and journal after journal. These journals are further proof of Áróra’s devotion and madness.

Cinematographer Kerttu Hakkarainen sweeps through the house, acting as our guide as he ushers us from one dangerous place to another. His patient eye makes the viewer feel as if the house has a life of its own, perhaps willed by Áróra and whatever unnatural magic she possesses.

Helena Stefansdottir doesn’t have a huge body of work behind her, but Natatorium proves she is someone to watch. Her measured pacing and knack for drawing out dread are fantastic. Her skills are evident in her first feature-length film, acting as both writer and director. There is a fascinating realism to the film. Scenes that could be maddeningly slow or unnecessary take on importance when viewed as a whole. Natatorium is a snapshot of a family in crisis, held hostage by a woman who is so convinced she is right, and there is no room for anything else, even life.

They are all desperately swimming in their little fishbowl, trying to stay alive. Vala and Magnus have a telling conversation before a dinner party where she tries to break down the walls of denial and he flatly refuses to admit anything. Gaslighting her instead of comforting her because he must shield himself from his mostly long-forgotten truth, he tells her he is sorry she “perceives it that way.” Aesthetically, the entire dinner party sequence is one of the boldest in the entire film. A balloon-blowing scene is so aggressively tedious that it is funny. It is absurdist gallows humor played with pitch perfection. A stalking camera circles the room, capturing every detail of the uncomfortable meal.

As Natatorium weaves its final spell, you realize you have been holding your breath. Drowning as you sink below the placid water, the real message crystallizes. This family did what it had to do to survive their matriarch. Natatorium is a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of dysfunction and pain.

Find all our SXSW 2024 coverage here.