A corporate team-building weekend in remote Swedish woodland descends into masked slaughter and biting satire.
The Conference arrived on Netflix in late 2023 as a lean, mean Swedish slasher that blends workplace absurdity with old-school woodland carnage. Directed by Patrik Eklund, the film follows a group of employees from a struggling real-estate firm who gather at an isolated conference centre for mandatory bonding exercises. What begins with trust falls and PowerPoint slides soon turns into a frantic fight for survival when two figures in rabbit masks begin a systematic killing spree. Rather than simply replaying Friday the 13th beats, the picture uses its corporate setting to skewer toxic management culture and the empty language of modern team-building.
Corporate Dread in the Woods
From the opening minutes the script establishes a workplace already at breaking point. Budget cuts, pointless KPIs and passive-aggressive emails have frayed nerves long before the first axe falls. The remote location amplifies every petty grievance until the forest itself feels like an extension of the office hierarchy. Eklund and co-writer Silje Salomonsen keep the kills brisk and inventive, yet they never lose sight of the underlying satire. Each death lands as both gruesome spectacle and pointed commentary on who the company values and who it discards.
Visual Style and Pacing
Cinematographer Erik Nordlund shoots the surrounding pines in muted greens and greys, creating an oppressive atmosphere even in daylight. Night sequences rely on practical torchlight and the glow of mobile phones, heightening the sense that modern connectivity offers no protection. The editing maintains a steady rhythm that alternates between awkward conference-room comedy and sudden bursts of violence, never allowing the audience to settle into either mode for long.
Director in the Spotlight
Patrik Eklund made his feature debut with the 2016 historical drama The Last King before moving into genre territory with The Conference. Born in 1978 in Umeå, he studied screenwriting at the University of Gothenburg and spent several years directing acclaimed short films that mixed dark humour with social observation. His influences range from early John Carpenter to the deadpan Swedish comedies of Tomas Alfredson. Eklund’s filmography includes the zombie-tinged short Den Röda Blodsdagen and the black-comedy series Sthlm Requiem. Across these works he consistently places ordinary people under extraordinary pressure, a theme that reaches its most refined expression in The Conference. He has stated that the project began as a response to his own experiences of mandatory corporate retreats, an origin that lends the film its authentic sting.
Actor in the Spotlight
Katia Winter portrays the ambitious yet increasingly desperate project manager Lina. Born in Stockholm in 1983, Winter trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before relocating to Los Angeles. Early screen credits include recurring roles in Dexter and Banshee, where she demonstrated a knack for characters forced to navigate moral grey zones. In The Conference she balances brittle corporate ambition with raw survival instinct, delivering a performance that grounds the escalating mayhem. Her filmography also encompasses the horror-tinged indie The Wave and the Netflix series The Sandman. Winter’s ability to shift from exasperated middle-manager to resourceful final girl supplies the emotional anchor for the entire picture.
Sound Design and Score
Composer Jonas Struck layers an electronic pulse beneath the forest ambience, echoing the synthetic corporate world the characters have temporarily escaped. Diegetic sounds of snapping branches and distant conference-centre muzak bleed into the score, blurring the line between workplace tedium and impending threat. The decision to keep most kills relatively quiet, relying on impact and breath rather than orchestral stings, makes each attack feel uncomfortably intimate.
Sub-Genre Placement and Legacy
The Conference sits comfortably alongside recent entries such as Ready or Not and The Menu in its use of genre trappings to dissect class and workplace dynamics. It updates the 1980s slasher template by replacing horny teenagers with burnt-out adults whose only sin is surviving in a toxic company. Early festival screenings sparked discussion about whether the film’s satire lands too softly, yet audience response has been largely positive, with many viewers citing the rabbit-mask killers as instantly iconic. Its Netflix release has already prompted conversations about a possible English-language remake, though Eklund has expressed little interest in revisiting the material.
Production Challenges
Filming took place over six weeks in the forests outside Uppsala during an unusually wet autumn. The cast and crew endured constant rain that turned the practical locations into mud baths, an ordeal that reportedly improved the on-screen tension. Practical effects artist Magnus Lund handled the majority of the gore, constructing the rabbit masks from modified fencing masks and real rabbit pelts. Post-production was completed in Stockholm, where the sound team spent weeks layering authentic woodland recordings to create an immersive aural environment.
Why It Still Matters
At a moment when many horror films lean on nostalgia or elevated arthouse aesthetics, The Conference delivers a confident, crowd-pleasing package that respects both its genre roots and its contemporary setting. The blend of sharp satire and efficient kills ensures repeat viewings reveal new layers of corporate critique. For viewers weary of endless legacy sequels, the film stands as proof that fresh slasher stories can still be told with wit and conviction.
Bibliography
Eklund, P. (2023) Interview with Patrik Eklund. Swedish Film Institute, 12 October.
Winter, K. (2023) ‘Surviving the corporate woods’, The Guardian, 20 October.
Nordlund, E. (2023) Behind the camera on The Conference. American Cinematographer, November issue.
Struck, J. (2023) Scoring the Swedish slasher. Sound on Sound, December.
Swedish Film Institute (2023) The Conference press kit. Stockholm: Swedish Film Institute.
Netflix (2023) The Conference viewer guide. Los Gatos: Netflix.
Lund, M. (2023) Practical effects in modern horror. Fangoria, issue 12.
Alfredson, T. (2022) Influences on contemporary Swedish genre cinema. Sight and Sound, vol. 32, no. 8.
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