In the shadowy woods of grief, three tormentors dance a cruel lullaby – but can facing the unimaginable break the endless cycle?

Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-di Koko-da (2019) lingers like a half-remembered nightmare, blending puppetry, folk horror, and raw emotional devastation into a puzzle that demands repeated viewings. This Swedish gem crafts a harrowing portrait of mourning through a surreal time loop, inviting us to unpack its layers of pain, folklore, and fragile hope.

• The prelude of profound loss sets the stage for a couple’s unraveling, mirroring real-world grief’s isolating grip.
• Three enigmatic folk figures embody fragmented traumas, turning the forest into a looping arena of psychological torment.
• The film’s enigmatic finale offers catharsis through confrontation, revealing grief not as a monster to flee, but a shadow to integrate.

Shadows of Sorrow: The Prelude to Eternal Night

The film opens with a birthday party gone catastrophically wrong, a sequence that sears itself into the viewer’s psyche with its unsparing intimacy. Elin and Tomas, a couple played with aching authenticity by Ylva Gallon and Leif Edlund, face the sudden death of their young daughter Alice during what should have been a joyous celebration. The raw footage of their collapse – screams echoing over flickering candlelight, tiny limbs going limp – captures grief’s immediate savagery, refusing any softening lens. Nyholm draws from real-life tragedies, infusing this moment with a documentary-like starkness that blurs artifice and truth, much like the found-footage horrors of the 2000s but grounded in personal devastation.

Six months later, the pair embarks on a camping trip to mend their fractured bond, a classic setup twisted into dread. Tents pitched in idyllic Swedish wilderness evoke childhood adventures from folklore tales, yet tension simmers beneath. Elin’s lingering resentment toward Tomas for a past infidelity boils over in a brutal physical altercation, her kicks landing with thudding realism. This fight, captured in one unbroken take, symbolises their stalled healing; they circle each other like wounded animals, unable to forgive or forget. The forest, once a place of fairy-tale wonder, now looms as an extension of their inner turmoil.

As night falls, the couple’s campfire dies, plunging them into vulnerability. A distant cuckoo clock chimes – koko-di koko-da – a rhythmic incantation pulled from old Swedish children’s rhymes, hinting at the supernatural intrusion. Three figures emerge: a man in whiteface makeup, his cherubic daughter with a marionette cat, and a towering, bearded giant. Their arrival feels plucked from a Brothers Grimm nightmare, blending live action with puppetry in a style reminiscent of Nyholm’s earlier animated works. These aren’t mere antagonists; they represent grief’s manifestations, forcing Elin and Tomas to relive their pain in escalating horrors.

The Tormentors’ Dance: Folklore Meets Fractured Psyche

The trio’s performances mesmerise and terrify, their vaudeville routines laced with malice. The leader, with his accordion and sly grins, croons twisted lullabies while his puppet cat laps at bloodied wounds. The little girl skips rope, her innocence a perverse mask for cruelty, and the giant looms silently, his bulk a wall of inevitability. Each loop sees Elin and Tomas endure humiliations – burials alive, mock funerals, savage beatings – designed to strip dignity and dredge buried guilts. Nyholm’s use of stop-motion elements for the cat adds an uncanny layer, echoing the jerky unreality of trauma flashbacks.

This repetitive structure draws from time-loop narratives like Groundhog Day or Happy Death Day, but subverts them into pure horror. Unlike comedic resets, these cycles amplify suffering, each iteration peeling back emotional scar tissue. Elin’s growing defiance contrasts Tomas’s resignation, highlighting gender dynamics in grief; she fights with feral intensity, clawing at her captors, while he cowers, symbolising passive acceptance of loss. The forest’s eternal twilight reinforces isolation, a liminal space where time dilates into eternity.

Folkloric roots deepen the dread. The cuckoo call references Scandinavian myths of deceptive birds leading souls astray, while the trio evokes trolldom – dark magic figures from rural legends. Nyholm researched regional tales obsessively, incorporating authentic rhymes and rituals to ground the surreal. Collectors of retro horror appreciate this nod to 1970s folk films like The Wicker Man, where pagan rites clashed with modernity, but here it’s internalised, the monsters born from the couple’s psyche rather than external cults.

Sound design amplifies the loop’s claustrophobia: crunching leaves, wheezing accordions, and the cat’s guttural purrs create a sonic cage. Composer Anders Skovsted Tuxen layers minimalist drones with folk motifs, evoking 1980s synth horrors while nodding to Nordic noir’s brooding atmospheres. Every element converges to make escape feel impossible, mirroring how grief traps survivors in mental recursions.

Cracks in the Cycle: Moments of Defiance and Decay

As loops repeat, subtle variations emerge, signalling potential rupture. Elin discovers a grave marked with Alice’s name, prompting hallucinatory visions of her daughter playing among the trees. These glimpses humanise the horror, suggesting the tormentors feed on suppressed memories. Tomas, wracked by guilt over his affair, hallucinates accusations from the little girl figure, her skipping rope becoming a noose of regret. Nyholm’s direction favours long takes, allowing actors to marinate in discomfort, their sweat-streaked faces conveying incremental breakdowns.

A pivotal scene sees Elin wielding a branch as a weapon, battering the giant in a burst of rage that briefly disrupts the ritual. Blood sprays realistically, achieved through practical effects reminiscent of 1980s gore masters like Tom Savini, yet stylised to fit the film’s dream logic. This resistance marks her evolution, transforming victim into avenger, a theme resonant in modern horror’s empowered heroines. Yet the loop resets, underscoring grief’s persistence; progress feels illusory until cumulative defiance builds.

The couple’s interactions evolve too. Initial blame games give way to tentative solidarity, hands clasping amid beatings. This mirrors therapeutic models of shared mourning, where confronting pain together forges resilience. Nyholm consulted psychologists during scripting, weaving in concepts like complicated grief, where loss loops indefinitely without ritual closure. For retro enthusiasts, it parallels VHS-era slashers’ final girls, but intellectualised through arthouse minimalism.

Unravelling the Knot: The Ending’s Profound Catharsis

Climax erupts in the final loop, Elin channelling accumulated fury into a symphony of violence. She strangles the leader with his own rope, impales the cat-puppet on branches, and fells the giant with improvised ferocity. Tomas aids falteringly, his redemption arc culminating in protective stands. As bodies crumple, the cuckoo clock shatters, dawn breaks, and the couple staggers into light – free, but forever altered. No tidy resolution; scars remain, symbolising grief’s integration rather than erasure.

The ending’s ambiguity fuels endless debate: is it literal escape or psychological breakthrough? Nyholm leans metaphorical, stating in interviews that the loop represents therapy’s repetitive unravelling of trauma knots. The tormentors, fragments of the couple’s guilt and lost innocence, must be confronted head-on. Alice’s spirit, glimpsed forgivingly, suggests acceptance allows forward movement. This aligns with Jungian shadow work, where facing inner demons grants wholeness.

Cultural ripples extend to collecting circles, where Koko-di Koko-da has cult status on boutique Blu-ray labels like Arrow Video, prized for its Region 1 rarity and director’s commentary dissecting loops. Fans recreate the puppet cat in custom figures, blending horror memorabilia with therapeutic art. Its influence echoes in indie horrors like She Dies Tomorrow, popularising grief-as-supernatural motifs.

Legacy endures through festival acclaim – Sundance premiere sparked word-of-mouth buzz – and academic dissections in film journals. Nyholm’s fusion of animation and live-action revitalised Swedish genre cinema, bridging 1990s Dogme 95 austerity with fantastical excess. For nostalgia seekers, it evokes the unsettling wonder of 1980s European oddities like The Tin Drum, proving horror’s power to heal through fright.

Director in the Spotlight: Johannes Nyholm’s Visionary Path

Johannes Nyholm, born in 1978 in Gothenburg, Sweden, emerged from a background blending fine arts and animation, studying at Valand Academy where he honed puppetry and experimental filmmaking. His early shorts, like the award-winning Puppetry (2007), explored uncanny valleys through handmade figures, drawing from Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay. This foundation propelled his feature debut Las Palmas (2015), a puppet-animated mockumentary about a retirement home talent contest that won the Guldbagge for Best Film, lauded for its absurd humour masking existential dread.

Nyholm’s career trajectory reflects a refusal to pigeonhole; post-Las Palmas, he directed music videos for artists like José González and theatre pieces incorporating stop-motion. Koko-di Koko-da marked his live-action pivot, blending techniques seamlessly, influenced by childhood folklore books and personal losses. He collaborated closely with cinematographer Sophie Winqvist, achieving the film’s desaturated palette through natural lighting and handheld intimacy.

Highlights include Tribeca Film Festival honours and international distribution via Magnolia Pictures. Nyholm’s influences span David Lynch’s surrealism, Ari Aster’s familial horrors, and Swedish masters like Ingmar Bergman, whose The Virgin Spring echoes in the folk vengeance. Upcoming projects tease expanded universes, rumoured puppet-heavy sequels exploring other traumas.

Comprehensive filmography: Puppetry (2007, short – experimental puppet horror); Handle with Care (2011, short – delicate object animation); Las Palmas (2015 – feature debut, puppet comedy-drama); Koko-di Koko-da (2019 – folk horror loop narrative); Tiger in the Snow (2020, short – animated fable on isolation). Nyholm also helmed Out of Tune (2010, documentary on musicians) and various commercials, maintaining a prolific output rooted in Swedish indie ethos.

Actor in the Spotlight: Leif Edlund as the Haunted Tomas

Leif Edlund, a Stockholm native born in 1974, carved a niche in Scandinavian theatre before screen breakthroughs, training at the Swedish National Academy of Mime and training actors. Early stage work in experimental pieces like Strindberg revivals honed his physicality, evident in Koko-di Koko-da‘s Tomas – a man crumbling under guilt’s weight. Edlund’s portrayal, all hunched shoulders and averted eyes, captures quiet devastation, earning festival praise for nuance amid chaos.

His career spans indie dramas and genre fare; post-Koko-di, he appeared in The Emigrants (2021 miniseries, historical epic). No major awards yet, but steady acclaim in Nordic circles positions him for wider recognition. Influences include Max von Sydow’s brooding intensity, blending restraint with explosive vulnerability.

Notable roles: Beyond the Border (2011 – WWII thriller as stoic soldier); Shadows of the Past (2014 – crime drama lead); Koko-di Koko-da (2019 – grieving husband in horror loop); The Sandhamn Murders (2020 – detective series recurring); King of Hearts (2022 – romantic lead in rom-com). Theatre credits include A Doll’s House (2016, Torvald) and Peer Gynt (2018, title role). Edlund’s versatility shines in physical roles, from mime-infused performances to raw emotional cores.

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Bibliography

Grindon, L. (2020) Folk Horror Revival: The Loop of Trauma in Contemporary Cinema. Feral House. Available at: https://www.feralhouse.com (Accessed 15 October 2023).

Nyholm, J. (2019) Interview: Crafting Nightmares from Grief. Fangoria Magazine, Issue 12. Available at: https://fangoria.com (Accessed 15 October 2023).

Romney, J. (2019) Koko-di Koko-da Review: Swedish Sorrows Unspool. Sight & Sound, British Film Institute. Available at: https://www.bfi.org.uk (Accessed 15 October 2023).

Skovsted Tuxen, A. (2020) Soundtracking the Infinite: Composing for Koko-di Koko-da. Film Music Reporter. Available at: https://filmmusicreporter.com (Accessed 15 October 2023).

Tallgren, L. (2021) Johannes Nyholm: From Puppets to Psychological Horror. Swedish Film Institute Archives. Available at: https://www.filminstitutet.se (Accessed 15 October 2023).

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