The Last Client film review: Danish psycho thriller mixes clever storytelling with brief torture violence

Language: Danish with English subtitles

If you can stomach what happens within the first seven minutes or so, The Last Client (titled Klienten in original Danish language) is among the smartest thrillers you’d have come across in recent times. Director-writer Anders Klarlund’s Danish serial killer chiller hits the ground running on a grotesque, gruesome note before unfolding a suspense drama that teases viewers with red herrings and an incessant flow of twists. The film, though, is different from most serial killer dramas that bank on the standard cops-chasing-psycho drill for a plot. It starts off on a familiar note, and proceeds to cleverly turn what seems like a cliched climax into an original ending one may barely see coming.

Klarlund and co-writer Jacob Weinreich, who creatively go by the name of AJ Kazinski, have crafted a slow-burn thriller that thrives on its economical use of characters, locations and time frame. The Scandinavian suspense drama as a genre, in bestseller novels as well as in films, is typified by the cold and underplayed precision with which it delivers brutality and is more often than not devoid of an overt play of emotions. Klarlund and Weinreich have introduced a relationship angle in the story. More than adding sentimental value, the track is used to render a sinister edge to the narrative.

Danish star Signe Egholm Olsen plays Susanne Hartmann, a reputed psychologist who is all set to wrap up a busy day. She takes in her last client of the day, a young man named Mark Zidenius (Anton Hjejle), who straightaway opens up with a strange assertion. Mark declares he wants to die, though the idea of suicide doesn’t fascinate him. “Suicides are for the weak. I want it to be like I was never here. I want to disappear. Completely. As if I were never here. I want to be deleted,” he tells Susanne, who not surprisingly advises him to see a psychiatrist.

The plot wastes no time in establishing Mark is the psycho that the news channels are calling the Foetus Murderer, who has been hogging a lot of the headlines lately. He is convinced Susanne is the person who can end his “torment” that, he claims, drives him to commit the heinous crimes. Susanne realises she could be the obviously deranged man’s next victim, unless she does as she is told. How she conducts the rest of the counselling session could spell the difference between life and death for her.

Without giving away spoilers, that brief synopsis of what happens early on is not what the film is about. Team Kazinski is seamless in the way they morph the storyline into a very different one from what it deceptively starts off as, and you would have to look closely to get an inkling of where exactly this story is headed. Most of the film’s 95-minute runtime happens in a closed atmosphere, with Susanne trapped with Mark inside her chamber. Klarlund and Weinreich set up a fascinating cat-and-mouse game through sheer exchange of words, which helps bottle up the tension before it explodes in a finale that would blindside many among the audience. Writing a thriller that primarily moves through conversations is as tough a challenge for the creators as it is entertaining for the viewers if done right. Team Kazinski’s triumph lies in the fact that writing is the strongest aspect of this production, otherwise also impressive in every aspect.

Klarlund’s indie film-style directorial execution is highlighted by the way he deliberately tones down the visual drama except towards the end, when the film turns into an action thriller, shedding its initial psychological suspense vibes. The overall understated cinematographic treatment gives a surprisingly forceful impact, yet leaves scope for focus on the primary characters.

The storytelling uses generic tropes as red herrings to throw viewers off-guard from what actually goes on. These are interspersed through the suspense drama, often in the form of conversational snatches between Mark and Susanne, about urgent social issues challenging the modern western world. Subject brought up, in sync with the plot, include pregnancy among single women, neglected childhood, effect of violent video games on kids, and parents who let their children get obsessed with such games. The discussions help maintain the suspense, about the characters and the story being woven around them. “If your parents don’t love you, it feels like an eternal fall into the abyss of loneliness with no one to catch you,” Mark tells Susanne. The line emerges as a crux around which the mystery drama revolves.

Signe Egholm Olsen as Susanne is absolutely fantastic in a role that traverses a pronounced curve, bringing alive the shades of a complex character. Anton Hjejle adds menace to his character of Mark, keeping guesswork alive over the motive of his protagonist all along. In a film that doesn’t care much for the thin lines between good and evil, or the moral and the immoral, Mark believes being a serial killer of single pregnant women is his way of “liberating” them. “Soldiers going to war kill so many and are called liberators,” he declares, adding that he takes just one life at a time. It is a provocative role and Hjejle makes the most of it. The film almost entirely rests on these two actors and nearly all of the balance cast are walk-ons.

A note of caution, to end with: The overall cinematic treatment of the film could seem unsavoury to many among audiences here. The Last Client, although strictly certified for 18 and above, could make many squirm with its macabre violence, a scene of sexual torture, brief partial nudity and certain thematic references. Scandinavian cinema is not normally known to deliver sanitised realism, after all.

Rating: * * * and 1/2 (three and a half stars)

The Last Client is available on BookMyShow Stream from 26 August

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist, and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.

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