‘The Trip’ (2021) Review: Parodying the Fear of Violence Against Men
Tommy Wirkola’s The Trip involves soap opera director Lars (Aksel Hennie) and aspiring actress Lisa (Noomi Rapace), who decide to spend some time at a remote cabin to rekindle their romance. Their marriage has been on the rocks for several months due to debt, infidelity, and their stalled careers. Unfortunately, they both have a more sinister plan in mind: killing each other. Lars plans to murder Lisa and collect the money from her life insurance. However, Lisa is smarter and more skilled than anyone believed, so she defends herself against Lars’ apprentice. Meanwhile, the dysfunctional couple is in the middle of another problem — escaped jailers have been hiding in their home and now hold them hostage. Together, Lars and Lisa must team up together and survive the brutal night.
While the first act promises an adventurous action-comedy about a couple with a crumbling marriage, the rest of the movie doesn’t hold on for much longer. The film’s problems with the non-linear structure tend to over-explain the plot. Whenever a twist is revealed by Lars and Lisa, it jumps back to the past and reveals what actually happened a few days or hours ago. While meant to bring more clarity to the narrative and characters, this structure is jarring and completely unnecessary.
Another issue with The Trip is a scene during the second act which involves threats of sexual assault and rape. This includes a scene where Lars is being forcefully held down by one of the escaped jailers on a billiard table as Lisa watches, strapped in a chair. Lars begs for his life to be spared, crying and desperately trying to escape the situation, while Lisa uncomfortably watches her husband. Understandably, this is not meant to be played for laughs, but was this aggression towards Lars necessary? The sexual assault of men has been used as a comedic tool to move the narrative forward. These kinds of dramatizations have been normalised and are designed to humiliate and demean men. In a culture where male victims of sexual assault and rape are not taken seriously, these kinds of scenes are violently needless. The Trip is a dark comedy that, perhaps, maybe too dark for some of the viewers.
Despite all of these issues, The Trip offers many messy, gory and bloody scenes between Lars and Lisa and the escaped jailers that inhabit their home. The scenes involve physical fighting, stabbing, firing guns, and whacking someone with a billiard ball inside a sock. Rapace is known for her action movies, and she is absolutely brilliant in all of the fighting sequences. Although this may not be on par with her other action flicks, it’s a close second. The bickering fights and chemistry between Hennie and Rapace convinces the audience that they are, in fact, in an unhappy marriage. Both of them are self-absorbed, passive-aggressive individuals who land themselves in hilarious and outlandish situations and must work together to get out of it. The Trip is filled with so many twists and turns, but the issues with narrative and the gross mistreatment of Lars does not make the movie enjoyable to watch.
Essentially, The Trip is meant to be an entertaining film about two people who want to murder each other, rather than go to therapy to solve their marital problems. In the case of Lars and Lisa, nothing ever goes according to plan. Wirkola steps out of line with Lars’ sexual assault threats and there should be no humour in showing these kinds of violent scenes. This movie is not meant to be politically correct but if there is a line, Wirkola has definitely stepped over it. The Trip went over the line in its treatment of sexual assault making it difficult to enjoy the movie and unable to recommend. Pop culture tends to treat threats of sexual assault as laughs, and the truth is that this horror-comedy film parodies the fear of violence against men.
