What if you combined elements of The Conjuring with Groundhog Day and even a dash of Antichrist? It sounds like a blend tailor-made for dark entertainment. And with Koko-Di Koko-da, you couldn’t say that Swedish writer-director Johannes Nyholm is sheepish in the way he takes on his unsettling conceit. But Nyholm tries to do both too much and not enough, and the result is a frequently tedious, frustrating brew.
A pre-credit sequence introduces the supernatural element; a dapper carnival barker leads a procession of circus entertainers—including a hulking strong man and a remarkably tall woman, through the woods, singing an eerie children’s song. The song then manifests in a vintage wind up music box that enthralls Maja (Katarina Jakobson), a young girl on vacation with her parents Tobias (Leif Edlund) and Elin Yliva Gallon). The happy holiday turns tragic when, after Elin develops an allergic reaction to mussels, Maja, who had shared the meal with her mother, dies, presumably also from a food reaction.
A charming, poignant shadow play sequence illustrates the parents’ grief and serves as a segue before the film returns to reality three years later when the couple is once again on vacation. Elin is brooding and unhappy, and Tobias is unable to communicate with his wife, and this is how they set off on a fateful camping trip that makes up the bulk of the film. After struggling to set up their tent, Elin has to brave mosquitoes outside in order to urinate, but when she goes into the woods, she’s overtaken by that carny and his entourage, who attack the couple.
The narrative gets stuck after that first attack; for as soon as the couple appears to be dead, the trip starts over again, with Tobias and Elin bickering on the road. After a few cycles, Tobias grows aware of their strange fate, but that doesn’t move the plot forward; it just repeats the sequence with slight variations—some of which include the appearance of a creepy white cat–that lead to the same end.
A bird’s eye camera angle at the end of each sequence suggests an otherworldly force watching over the horror, and with the film’s cyclical nature, one could imagine that Maja herself is setting her parents on this torture ride. The music box seems to be in the haunted school of certain objects in the Conjuring cinematic universe. Conceptually, this dark fantasy had potential, and in this supremely dark year the couple’s struggle with their emotions could have been a reflection of the world’s own terror at what at times appears to be a persistent demonic presence.
But if Koko-di Koko-da is ultimately about one couple’s inability to deal with their grief, then the film is the aesthetic embodiment of that same stunted emotional state. Nyholm is clearly capable of conveying pathos with beauty and efficiency, but if you remove everything but the shadow-play sequences, then there isn’t much of a feature here. And that’s the problem.
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