Watched Sweden's 2023 The Conference (1:40:07). Project managers Ingela and Jonas reward their team of municipal employees for their success in obtaining land for the erection of Kolarangen Kopcentrum, a shopping mall. The land, however, was forcibly purchased from Paisson, a farmer, who committed suicide after his farm was torn down. The municipal team attend a retreat at Kolarsjon Holiday Village to participate in a series of team-building exercises. One by one, the holiday village staff members and the municipal employees are murdered by a mysterious killer.
The movie is well-made and entertaining--no stupid dialogue, no non-sequiturs--but is also derivative of earlier movies with similar situations and story lines, such as the 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the 2005 The Wax Museum, and of course, the classic, Agatha Christie Ten Little Niggers a.k.a Ten Little Indians a.k.a the 1945 And Then There Were None. Its success, though, is in the writers' and the director's creativity in portraying different kinds of deaths, and in giving the movie appropriate closure. The story line is also plausible, based on government land-grabbing, corruption, and the lust for wealth.
Overall a good screening despite its basic unoriginality.
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