9 / 10
Mortal is what a superhero origin story looks like when the director comes from Norwegian horror cinema rather than from American comic book adaptation. André Øvredal directed Trollhunter in 2010 and The Autopsy of Jane Doe in 2016. Both films treat supernatural material as if it were happening in a country that has actual landscape, actual weather, and actual people. Mortal does the same thing with Norse mythology. The result is the best Thor origin story ever filmed, and the title character is never called Thor.
The 9 reflects honest evaluation of a film that almost nobody saw because the distributor buried it. Mortal arrived in 2020 during the pandemic. Saban Films released it to limited theaters and video on demand at the same time. The reviews were mixed because critics expected a Marvel-style superhero film and got a Norwegian psychological thriller instead. Audiences who watched it without expectations generally liked it. The film deserves substantially more attention than it has received.
The Setup
Eric Bergland (Nat Wolff) is a young American man wandering the Norwegian wilderness in the opening sequence. He has not slept properly in days. He cannot remember exactly what happened to him. He is being hunted by both Norwegian police and his own genetic inheritance. Eric has discovered that he can generate electrical energy with his hands. He has accidentally killed a teenage boy in a forest encounter. He does not know what he is. He needs help understanding what he has become.
Christine Ardal (Iben Akerlie) is a young Norwegian psychologist working at the local hospital. She is assigned to evaluate Eric after the police bring him in. Her evaluation is supposed to be a routine assessment. The evaluation becomes the relationship that drives the film. Christine is the first person to listen to Eric without immediately concluding that he is delusional. The film is basically their conversation, expanded across the runtime to include the institutional forces trying to control what Eric has become.
The Discovery
The film handles the discovery of Eric’s powers with patience that American superhero films almost never demonstrate. Eric does not know what he is for the first thirty minutes of the film. The audience does not know what he is. The Norwegian police do not know what he is. The American embassy does not know what he is. The discovery unfolds gradually through accumulated evidence. Christine notices that Eric’s body temperature is elevated. Christine notices that electrical equipment malfunctions near him. Christine notices that he has burns and scars he cannot explain.
The American embassy sends a representative named Henrik (Per Frisch) to retrieve Eric. The representative knows more than he tells Christine. The representative has been monitoring Eric’s situation for longer than Eric realizes. The American government has institutional interest in Eric because Eric has done something specific that triggered alerts in monitoring systems that exist for exactly this kind of person. The film does not announce what those systems are. The film lets the existence of the systems imply the larger world Eric belongs to.
For Writers
Mortal demonstrates the value of withholding the central premise from the audience for the first third of the film. American superhero films typically open with the protagonist’s origin and let the audience watch the discovery process from a position of knowing more than the character. Mortal reverses this. The audience and the character discover what Eric is at the same time. The reveal lands harder because the audience has been earning it alongside Eric for the previous thirty minutes. The lesson for writers is that knowledge gaps between audience and character can be deployed either direction. Letting the audience know more than the character produces dramatic irony. Letting the character know more than the audience produces mystery. Letting the audience and character discover together produces shared experience. All three approaches are valid. Mortal chose the third approach and the choice generates the film’s distinctive emotional weight.
The Performances
Nat Wolff plays Eric as a man genuinely broken by what is happening to him. He does not understand his powers. He does not want his powers. He is killing people accidentally and the killings are accumulating regardless of his intentions. Wolff plays the confusion and the guilt without ever giving Eric the performance markers that American superhero films use to signal protagonist heroism. Eric does not have a quip. Eric does not have a swagger. Eric is terrified through most of the runtime.
Wolff was previously known for The Fault in Our Stars and The Stand. The performances had been competent without being distinguished. Mortal is the role where Wolff demonstrates what he is capable of when the material requires interior work rather than exterior charm. The performance is the foundation the film builds on. If Wolff does not sell Eric’s terror, the film collapses. He sells it completely.
Iben Akerlie plays Christine as a working psychologist doing her job under increasingly impossible circumstances. The performance is grounded. Christine is intelligent without being implausibly intelligent. Christine is sympathetic without being sentimentally sympathetic. She listens to Eric. She tries to help him. She also recognizes the danger he represents to herself, to the hospital, and to the surrounding community. The character is not a romantic interest construct designed to provide emotional support. The character is a professional engaging with a difficult patient who happens to be more than a patient.
The supporting cast of Norwegian actors brings the kind of grounded ensemble work that Scandinavian cinema produces routinely. The hospital staff feels like actual hospital staff. The police officers feel like actual police officers. The townspeople feel like actual townspeople. The film never breaks the illusion that all of this is happening in a recognizable Norway populated by recognizable Norwegians.
The Norwegian Landscape
Øvredal shoots Norway as a character rather than as a backdrop. The fjords. The waterfalls. The forests. The small towns with wooden houses and church spires. The mountain roads. The stone bridges. All of it appears on screen with the specificity that demonstrates the director knows what these places look like and how to film them. Cinematographer Roman Osin captured the country with the kind of attention that travel documentaries rarely achieve.
The decision to shoot in the actual locations rather than on soundstages or in cheaper international substitutes is what gives the film its distinctive texture. Eric is genuinely alone in a Norwegian forest in the opening sequence because the production shot him alone in a Norwegian forest. The cold is real. The wind is real. The water is real. The film has a physical reality that American superhero productions, shot largely on green screen, simply cannot match.
Norway is also a country where the old gods are still part of the cultural landscape. The hospital staff include people who half-believe what Eric is becoming because their grandparents told them stories that turn out to be true. The film does not need to introduce the audience to Norse mythology. The film assumes Norwegian familiarity with Norse mythology and lets the assumption carry the worldbuilding. American audiences receive enough context to follow the story. Norwegian audiences receive a film that genuinely speaks their cultural language.
The Marvel Comparison
Marvel Studios released Thor in 2011. Kenneth Branagh directed Chris Hemsworth as the Asgardian thunder god in a film that operates as Shakespearean fantasy filtered through American comic book convention. The Marvel Thor is good. The Marvel Thor is also basically a comic book adaptation that uses Norse mythology as costume rather than as content.
Mortal is what a Thor film looks like when the director treats Norse mythology as living tradition rather than as costume. Eric Bergland is not Thor. Eric Bergland is a man who discovers he is descended from someone the Norse gods may have actually been. The mythology is presented as folklore that may be more accurate than the modern world has acknowledged. The lightning powers are not superhero abilities. The lightning powers are the manifestation of inheritance from beings that did not technically die when the Christian conversion of Scandinavia drove their worship underground.
The American superhero approach makes the protagonist a hero. The Norwegian approach makes the protagonist a danger. Eric does not want to be powerful. Eric is killing people. Eric needs the powers contained, not deployed. The film treats his condition as something closer to a curse than to a gift. This framing is closer to how Norse mythology itself treats divine inheritance than the Marvel approach is. The Norse gods were not heroes. The Norse gods were terrifying forces that humans propitiated and survived. Mortal honors this tradition. The Marvel films honor a different tradition.
For Writers
Mortal demonstrates the value of treating mythological material on its own terms rather than translating it into modern superhero conventions. The Norse gods were not friendly. The Norse gods were not relatable. The Norse gods were not pursuing personal growth or romantic subplots. The Norse gods were powerful, dangerous, often cruel, and frequently destructive of the humans who encountered them. Mortal treats Eric’s inheritance as belonging to that tradition. He is dangerous. The danger is the inheritance. The inheritance is not something he can simply learn to control through training montages and supportive friendships. The lesson for writers is that source material has its own internal logic, and adapting source material works best when the adaptation respects that logic rather than imposing more familiar logics on top of it. Norse mythology is not Christian mythology. Norse mythology is not American superhero mythology. Norse mythology has its own rules. Mortal follows the rules of its source. Marvel writes new rules and applies them to characters with Norse names.
The Direction
Øvredal directs the film with the patience that horror filmmakers develop. He understands that suspense is generated through duration and restraint rather than through cutting rhythm and music cues. The opening sequence with Eric alone in the forest runs without dialogue for substantial duration. The audience watches him struggle with what he is becoming before the film tells the audience what he is becoming. The patience pays off.
The set pieces are physical rather than digital. When Eric generates electrical power, the effects are practical when possible and CGI only when necessary. The combination produces lightning that feels like actual lightning rather than like cartoon energy bolts. The destruction happens at human scale rather than at city-wide scale. A car is destroyed. A building is damaged. A small group of people is killed. The film never inflates the consequences to the level Marvel productions routinely deploy. The intimate scale makes the violence feel weightier than larger-scale superhero violence typically does.
Øvredal also understands tonal range. The film has moments of genuine humor. Christine and Eric develop a working relationship that occasionally produces small comic exchanges. The film never treats itself as too serious to acknowledge that two young people who like each other will sometimes say funny things. The humor is restrained. The humor is also present. The combination produces a film that feels alive rather than relentlessly grim.
The Ending
The film ends with the setup for a sequel that may never come. Eric has discovered the full extent of what he is. The American intelligence operatives have closed in. Christine has made decisions about her role in what happens next. The final sequence positions the film as the opening chapter of a larger story. The larger story has not been told. Saban Films has not announced a sequel. The director has moved on to other projects. The audience that watched Mortal in 2020 may have to live with the ending the film provided.
The ending works on its own terms even without continuation. Eric has accepted what he is. Christine has accepted who Eric is. The institutional forces are still trying to contain what Eric represents. The story could continue. The story has also reached an emotionally complete stopping point. The film does not depend on a sequel for its primary effects to land. The sequel would be welcome. The sequel is not required.
The Distribution Failure
Saban Films released Mortal in November 2020 to limited theaters and video on demand. The pandemic had been ongoing for nine months. The theatrical market was effectively closed. Saban had limited resources for marketing. The film was not given the platform it deserved. American audiences who would have responded to it had no realistic way to discover it.
The reviews were divided. American critics expecting Marvel-style superhero adventure were disappointed. Norwegian and European critics responded more favorably. The film has slowly built a small audience through word of mouth in the years since its release. It deserves a substantially larger audience than it has so far reached. The distribution failure is a structural problem with the modern film market rather than a problem with the film itself.
Craft Note
Craft Note
Mortal is the example case for what happens when a competent filmmaker takes a familiar genre and applies the conventions of a different national cinema to it. The American superhero film operates within established conventions that audiences have absorbed across two decades of MCU productions. Origins are quick. Powers are exciting. Mentors appear. Training montages happen. The hero learns to use the power. The hero deploys the power against an antagonist. The hero saves something or someone. Mortal does not follow any of these conventions. The origin is slow. The power is terrifying. The mentor is a psychologist who does not know what she is dealing with. There are no training montages. The hero never learns to control the power. The hero does not save anything. The hero just survives long enough to understand what he is. The film works because the Norwegian horror tradition Øvredal comes from has different assumptions about what a story should accomplish. American audiences raised on Marvel may need to recalibrate. The recalibration is worth doing. Mortal is what superhero cinema looks like when the director treats the source material as folklore rather than as merchandise.
The Verdict
A 9. Mortal is the best Thor origin story ever filmed and the title character is never called Thor. André Øvredal brought Norwegian horror sensibility to superhero material and produced a film that reaches further than most American superhero productions manage. Nat Wolff delivers the performance of his career. Iben Akerlie grounds the film with the kind of professional realism that Scandinavian ensemble work produces routinely. The Norwegian landscape becomes a character. The Norse mythology is treated as living tradition rather than as costume.
The film deserves substantially more attention than the pandemic-era distribution gave it. Find it. Watch it. Recommend it to people who think they know what superhero cinema can do. They probably do not know yet. Mortal will show them.
FAQ
Is this connected to Marvel’s Thor?
No. Mortal is an independent production with no connection to Marvel Studios or to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film draws on the same Norse mythological source material that Marvel adapted for the Thor films. The treatment is substantially different. Marvel produced superhero adventure with Norse costuming. Mortal produces psychological thriller with Norse folklore as living tradition.
Who directed it?
André Øvredal directed. He had previously directed Trollhunter (2010), a found-footage film about Norwegian troll hunters that became a cult favorite, and The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), a supernatural horror film with Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch. Both previous films demonstrated the patience and physical realism that distinguish Mortal from American genre productions.
Is there going to be a sequel?
No sequel has been announced. The film was set up to continue but the pandemic-era distribution failure damaged the commercial prospects for continuation. Saban Films has not committed to additional installments. The director has moved on to other projects, including The Last Voyage of the Demeter in 2023.
Why did the distribution fail?
The film was released in November 2020 during the height of pandemic theatrical closures. Saban Films had limited marketing resources. The film was at the same time released to limited theaters and video on demand. American audiences who would have responded to it had no realistic way to discover it. The distribution failure is a structural problem with the modern film market rather than a problem with the film itself.
Is Nat Wolff actually good in this?
Yes. Wolff had previously done competent work in The Fault in Our Stars and The Stand without distinguishing himself. Mortal is the performance that demonstrates what he can do when the material requires interior work. He plays Eric’s terror and confusion with genuine commitment. The film depends on his performance. He delivers it.
What is the connection to Thor?
The film never uses the name Thor directly. The premise is that Eric Bergland is descended from beings the Norse worshipped as gods. The lightning powers and the storm-generation abilities are inheritance from one of these beings. The audience is meant to understand the connection without the film announcing it. The choice is deliberate. The film treats the mythology as folklore that may be more accurate than the modern world has acknowledged rather than as comic book material to be deployed openly.
How does it compare to Trollhunter?
Both films share Øvredal’s interest in treating Norwegian folklore as if it were genuinely present in the modern Norwegian landscape. Trollhunter is found-footage comedy-horror with practical creature effects. Mortal is conventional narrative with more limited effects use. The shared element is the willingness to take the mythological premises seriously as physical facts about the world the films are set in. Both films are worth watching.
Is the Norwegian landscape really that beautiful?
Yes. The locations in the film are real Norwegian fjords, forests, and mountain regions. The production filmed on location rather than constructing sets or substituting cheaper international locations. The physical reality of the country is what gives the film its distinctive texture. American superhero productions shot largely on green screen cannot match this kind of physical specificity.
Why is Christine a psychologist rather than a scientist?
The psychologist framing produces different dramatic possibilities than the scientist framing would have produced. A scientist would have approached Eric as a phenomenon to be studied and explained. A psychologist approaches Eric as a person to be understood and helped. The relationship between Eric and Christine becomes professional and personal in ways the scientist relationship could not have generated. The film is more interested in Eric as a person than in Eric as a phenomenon. The psychologist framing supports this interest.
Should I watch this if I do not like Marvel films?
Particularly yes. Mortal is what superhero material looks like when the production does not assume the audience has been trained on Marvel conventions. The film operates as psychological thriller and supernatural fantasy without the structural beats that comic book adaptations rely on. Audiences exhausted by MCU formula often respond very well to Mortal because the film is doing something genuinely different with similar source material.