CLOSE TO STOCKHOLM

REVIEWED - EVIL/ONDSKAN: A major box office success in its native Sweden, Evil is based on Jan Guillou's 1981 semi-autobiographical novel, which caused such a convulsive impact that it outsold all other Swedish novels over the past two decades, writes Michael Dwyer

At the root of the public fascination with its story were its shocking revelations of institutional abuse in a not-too-distant past. In that respect, the Irish equivalents of the book and the film would be Angela's Ashes and The Magdalene Sisters, respectively. The third feature film directed by Mikael Håfström, Evil opens in late 1950s Stockholm, where 16-year-old Erik is subjected to brutal beatings by his stepfather while his timid mother stays silent. Releasing his anger on his fellow schoolboys, Erik is described by his headmaster as "evil in its purest form", and is expelled.

When his mother raises the money to send Erik to a prestigious boarding school, he is appalled by the cruelty and oppression of the senior students, who compose the school council and administer discipline on behalf of the teachers. In one sequence, the headmaster and his staff get on with eating their dinner while a senior student draws blood from a younger boy in the refectory.

Håfström effectively depicts an environment in which violence breeds more violence, while simultaneously charting the dilemma faced by Erik as he tries to put violence behind him. Highly promising newcomer Andreas Wilson is admirably subtle and assured as Erik, resembling James Dean in appearance and moody demeanour in a movie that makes several explicit references to Rebel Without a Cause.

However, Håfström treads a thin line as he piles on the graphic violence and ultimately uses it as the key to catharsis, and his film is undermined to an extent by drawing all its characters as extreme forms of good and evil. David Cronenberg presents a more complex and thoughtful treatment of a similar theme in his new movie, A History of Violence, which opens here next month.