Wrath Of The Gods

Some years before his passing, Wicker Man director Robin Hardy and I had a few drinks and got to talking about what he described as the third part of his trilogy. It was to be set in Iceland, “where, as we all know, the gods live,” and what he waxed about most enthusiastically was the blonde he had found for the leading role. Though we didn’t did go much into the details of the plot, as soon as I heard about the old idea of his that his sons Justin and Dominic had found amongst his belongings, it was plain that this was the same thing. In their hands, however, it lost the sex and it lost the mischief. What has emerged is a very different kind of tale, not really in the spirit of Robin’s instalments. It is, perhaps, much more in touch with the spirit of the modern age. We still find the conflict between the old ways and the new, but the glory of both is much diminished.

Tragically, Justin passed away just two weeks before the film premièred at Frightfest, something he had very much been looking forward to. This makes it difficult to write about its shortcomings. The brothers experienced so much loss on account of their father’s ambitions – as they addressed in documentary Children Of The Wicker Man – that they really deserved to find a path through it to a triumph of their own, but that is not what Wrath of The Gods delivers. In light of Justin’s impressive directing history, it’s unexpectedly scrappy, with poor cinematography, a padded script and some notably weak performances from members of the supporting cast. At its worst, it looks like a soap opera transported to the rugged, rain-torn north. Its biggest advantage is that it is so very different from its predecessors that any inclination to compare them will soon be forgotten.

Shot in the Shetland Isles – and making use of their Up Helly Aa festival, its only real touch of glamour – the film is set on the fictional island of Hel, which you may be familiar with as the mythical land which, in old Norse tales, received the souls of those who had died in ignominy. Described as being somewhere in the North Sea, it certainly has that climate. Rough grass shudders under near permanent squalls as the people hide away in cowed stone houses. The breezy white sand beaches appear only in flashback. Heroine Anna (Christiane Schaldemose) remembers dancing and laughing there with her beloved husband Ingram (Jamie Rhodes). Now Ingram is gone, having given himself to the sea (a shocking choice for those familiar with the old ways, because it means the loss of the soul forever) and she, with daughter Gudrun (Martha Robertson) in tow, has returned to the island in the hope of finding out what happened.

What the film does have in common with The Wicker Man and The Wicker Tree is the understanding that the shortest route to truth is not always a straight line. There is a mystery here, and some of it intentionally, obtusely constructed, as you might guess early on with the discovery that Ingram has left his widow a riddle for a clue. To acquire the truth, Anna must first be ready to accept it, and must be able to recognise it for what it is. But is that something she can bear.

It is hard enough to for to spend the day of her search in one of those small houses with Ingram’s doting mother and his father, Tulloch (Francis Magee, who played Yoren of the Night’s Watch in Game Of Thrones and recently appeared in Rose Of Nevada). A giant of a man prone to ferocious bursts of temper, Tulloch has many a harsh word for Anna but adores Gudrun, who is confused by the complex emotional exchanges between the adults around her. With a young girl recently having disappeared on the island, there is concern for Gudrun’s safety, but Anna cannot guard her daughter full time at the same time as devoting herself to the matter she came for.

There should be enough here to make a decent film. Schaldemose is good and Magee terrific. There are moments when things come together and the fierce weather generates a powerful mood. Sadly, it is all too scattershot. Characters behave in ways which are simply too inconsistent, their reasoning doesn’t make much sense no matter how one looks at it, and the pacing of the story is all over the place. Every time it succeeds in building up tension, the film throws it away again. It becomes impossible to immerse oneself or invest deeply in any aspect of what’s happening.

Perhaps this is how it was always going to be. One cannot make a habit of catching lightning in a bottle. Better to tell one’s own stories – and yet, as Wrath Of The Gods itself eventually concludes, some legacies are hard to shake. When the storm has blown itself out, there is only silence.

Reviewed on: 28 Aug 2026