Recently when I discovered the movie available on Shudder I re-watched with a friend of mine this marvelous Swedish ghost story. I encountered this movie the first time I attended the Horrible Imaginings Film Festival and it blew me away as the best film of that year. It was presented as part of the LGQT block of films. Repeated viewings have not dimmed my appreciation of it’s characters, story, or production.

Adapted from a Swedish graphic novel of the same title Alena is the story of a teenaged girl, Alena, when she transfers from a public school with a poor reputation to an elite all-girl private school. Immediately classed as a social outcast by Filippa and her closed

clique of popular girls but befriended, and more, by iconoclast Fabienne Alena desperately tried to fit in and find a life for herself at the school and on its lacrosse team. Though not a student at the school Alena is also close with Josefin, a close friend from her life on the wrong side of the tracks. Filippa, who still carries a torch for Fabienne, orchestrates severe harassment against Alena prompting the film’s transition from high school drama to horror culminating in Alena confronting her past and the truth she has fled from.

Stylish, atmospheric, and moody, Alena  is a movie that knows the power of suggestion, the impact of the unseen, and also when to bring out the blood shocking and horrifying the viewing with its brutal and sudden appearance. The violence, both physical and sexual, are handled well enough that this move never slips over into exploitation or titillation keeping its viewpoint firmly grounded the reality of the characters and their lives despite ultimately being a story of the supernatural. While the ghost in this movie exists and have direct influence on characters and events it also stands in as a metaphor for the pasts we try to bury, for the responsibilities we attempt to deny, and the harm we carry forward with us from out past traumas. Alena’s biggest flaws is that there are times here and there that the subtitling, this film’s dialog is entirely in Swedish, is occasionally off and needed at least one more pass from a native English speaker. That said this is a movie I highly recommend, and it is currently available on Shudder and Amazon Prime video.v