Title: “Offervilje” (“The Ultimate Sacrifice”)
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Kjetil Indregard
Storyline: Okay, from what I read this series follows a set of passengers on a bus, and each episode focuses on the story of one of the passengers. That story is also linked to a holiday for some reason. This one concerns a woman who, while riding the bus, suddenly sees her hands begin to bleed. The action changes to a guy going for an important interview with the CEO of finance company (I think that means he’s a journalist interviewing the CEO, rather than trying to get a job there, but the translation does not make that clear) then flashes back to five years previous, as a family arrive at their new downsized home, a cottage in the country. The mother (the woman in the story) does not look happy but her adult children try to tell her it’s not so bad. They meet the neighbours, who seem friendly, but Molly, the mother, thinks they’re weird and a little pushy when they offer to help them sort out the cottage.
They don’t expect many to turn up but a crowd does (all holding small animals and seeming a little too attached to them?) and the work is done in no time, as they settle down to a barbeque. (Trollheart’s Theory: these are cannibals). While out jogging she sees two of the women, pets in their arms, head through the forest and while she watches in horror one sacrifices her cat, stabbing it with a knife. In shock, she steps back and is discovered. The two women seem to debate between themselves, then decide to take her into their confidence. They tell her the town is built on an old Viking burial ground, and we all know how Vikings loved to sacrifice animals to their gods. She’s told that one of the townsfolk took his dog, which had cancer, to the spot where Molly saw them do in the cat - it’s an old sacrificial stone, apparently - and shot him. The next day he won the lottery. So now everyone thinks the stone works, and they sacrifice their pets when they need good fortune.
Not cannibals, then. Damn.
The women warn her that the stone could change her; if she thinks she can get anything she wants with it, she may lose control. She tests it by catching a rat and splattering it on the stone, then legs it to the shop, buys a scratch card but only wins a small amount. The women tell her that in order to get a proper reward the animal has to have a bond with her. They own a dog, so yeah, you can see where this is going now. After callously killing the dog she goes to buy a lottery ticket. Meanwhile her daughter is frantically searching for her dog while Molly sits at home greedily and anxiously watching the draw for the lottery. She almost has is, getting increasingly excited as number after number comes up, but then the last one is wrong, and she’s furious. No jackpot for her!
The women laugh at her when she rages. They know, they can tell that though it was her daughter’s dog she didn’t love it. I mean, who could kill a pet they loved so easily for mere money? And now you can see where we’re headed. They did mention when they told her about the stone that the Vikings sometimes sacrificed humans so… She decides to tell her husband, and leads him to the stone. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say she’s prepared to sacrifice him for her precious jackpot. She doesn’t seem the sort to really entertain remorse, or to let anything stand in the way of her goals, and the women did say the more she loved something, the more money she would get.
So she does it. She goes to the sacrificial stone with her husband and attacks him. The scene changes. We’re back with the guy and his interview with that CEO. He asks if there is any subject he should avoid (he’s clearly a journalist) and he’s told to avoid asking her about how she made her first million. Back to the past we go. Molly is about to kill her husband when Katja, her daughter, comes upon them. They struggle. Molly tries to kill Katja but her daughter in desperation, fighting for her life, picks up a stone and smashes into into her mother’s head. Cut back to the present and it’s Katja who is the CEO, a big white fluffy cat on her lap which she pets constantly like a female Bond villain.
Comments: This was really good. On the surface, a version of the old sacrifice-in-the-woods-Indian burial ground idea, but cleverly used. The script kept me guessing to the end, and even then I wasn’t sure who was going to be in the chair until she turned around. A good morality tale with a chilling ending.
Rating: A+