Aahana Swrup
‘The Storm’ is a Swedish dark comedy film that invites the audience to a lavish dinner shared between a group of friends who prove to be incredibly prone to cabin fever. Filip’s birthday offers the opportune excuse for a ragtag group of old university friends to get together at the host’s brand-new business endeavor, a luxurious B&B lodging. This friend group includes a myriad of personalities, from the highly successful businessman Henrik Muller and his wife, Ninni, to the recently sober Jacob and his uptight partner, Nicholas.
Additionally, there’s Ossi, the class clown who never graduated from that role, his wife, Kina, the PC-conscious Nattis, and Fillip’s wife, Caroline, who is desperate to ensure the evening goes well. Naturally, when an unexpected storm boxes this group of people in at the lodge, with walls of snow blocking every exit, it’s only a matter of time before the night devolves into a disaster of epic proportions. SPOILERS AHEAD.
The Storm Plot Synopsis
Caroline and Filip are leaving no stone unturned as they prepare for a big night ahead. The couple, who are also expecting a baby, are opening their Bed & Breakfast (B&B) at a remote lodge they’ve recently bought as their forever home. The following night is set to be the venture’s unofficial soft launch, a birthday celebration to which all their university friends are invited. On the guest list, Henrik Muller holds the top spot as a potential investor who may or may not be the last hope for getting this business off the ground. However, little do they know that the same morning the businessman prepares for the evening ahead, he receives a jarring phone call. As it turns out, Muller Group’s board of directors has decided that Henrik must be kicked out of his own company. As such, he has until the end of the day to submit his resignation.
As the soon-to-be ex-CEO remains preoccupied with his impending demise, he continues to ignore his wife, Ninni, deepening her sense of neglect. Meanwhile, another couple, Kina and Ossi, deal with their own set of worries. The former has concerns about leaving their pre-teen son, Dougie, alone. At the same time, her husband overcompensates with his Gucci loafers, which are terribly ill-suited to the snowy weather outside. Lastly, Nicholas remains unamused at the prospect of spending an evening with the friends of his partner, Jacob, but is unable to get out of the plans. Eventually, the friends convene at an inn before they’re all loaded up into a van and driven to their friends’ lodge. By the time they arrive at the location, the weather has turned severe, suggesting a storm on the horizon.
For the same reason, Filip asks the van driver, Stefan, to stay back and settles him into a suite for the night. The festivities of the celebration begin with a lavish dinner, served by Caroline’s brother, Petter, who is an up-and-coming chef. He is also someone with little to no rules in the kitchen, and he owns psychedelic mushrooms kept in a jar identical to the one holding the ingredients for the night’s main course. The night gets off to a clumsy start when Filip gives a toast that includes a story about a group of friends who died in the cabin in the 1600s due to poor ventilation. What follows is a night of many expected and some unexpected disasters. Ossi accidentally lets Mochi, Nattis’ dog, out in the storm and tries to cover up his mistake. Kina worries about Dougie and tries to leave the B&B.
When she realizes they’ve been snowed in, she tries to shovel her way out, resulting in unpleasant frostbites on her feet. Caroline accidentally serves psychedelic mushrooms, which Nicholas devours. Henrik grows agitated about the inevitability of his resignation and picks a politically charged fight with Nattis about gender before disappearing to drown his sorrows in expensive alcohol. Meanwhile, the latter complains about Jacob “losing his spark,” which drives him to drink again. As it turns out, the spark is just uninvited reality checks that are really just rude criticisms in disguise. After finding Mochi’s leash in Stefan’s room, Nattis becomes convinced that the driver kidnapped her dog, which results in her tying him up with Ossi’s help. Lastly, Caroline, upon realizing that the entire night has spiraled into chaos, has a breakdown of her own, during which she tries to set the entire cabin on fire.
The Storm Ending: Who Dies? Who Survives?
The dinner proves to be a much more lethal endeavor than anyone could’ve expected going in. It’s supposed to be a reunion of sorts, bringing old friends together. However, several unseen factors influence each individual’s narrative, adding dangerous pressure to the situation. The dinner, on its own, is highly important to Caroline. The B&B is a last-ditch resort for success for her and her husband. Therefore, she’s desperate to showcase the business’s success to their guests while also finding a way to convince Henrik to invest in the idea. Filip, who has been feeling a lot of friction in his marriage recently, is eager to host a great night for his wife in the hope that it will help their relationship recover. On the other hand, the night reveals itself to be the depressing end of an era for Henrik. The business had built his identity and his life around his wealth and success.
Therefore, Henrik believes that once these things are taken from him along with the Muller Group, he will lose everything. While he mourns the looming bleakness of his life, his wife continues to suffer, feeling deeply neglected, desperate for validation, and finding it at the end of alcohol and pill bottles. Ossi’s internalized insecurity leads him to disregard his family, which frustrates Kina. However, she believes that all marriages are hard work; thus, she is unwilling to address the problem. Instead, she puts all her effort towards her relationship with her son until she has convinced herself that she needs to fight her way through walls of snow to get to him on the off-chance that he might need her. Jacob and Nicholas are both too uptight and inevitably find release in chaos-inducing substances, whether intentional or not.
Lastly, Nattis has many unresolved feelings about her inability to have children, which she suppresses with her overly dependent relationship with her dog, Mochi. Therefore, when she suspects Stefan of hurting her pet, she ties him up and interrogates him to the point of accidentally cutting off a finger. Thus, almost every character creates life-threatening situations for themselves. Kina walks out into the snowstorm; Nicholas takes a dive into the courtyard fountain in full armor; Ossi convinces himself he has killed Mochi, which promises bad things for both him and Nattis. However, Caroline proves to be the biggest danger to the group. Near the end of the night, she falls victim to one of Jacob’s devastating truth bombs as he asserts that she has only loneliness and failure in store for her. Shortly thereafter, Caroline walks in on her husband and Kina in what appears to be a compromising position.
In reality, Filip kneels before the other woman to rub the frostbite off her severely injured feet. Nonetheless, the optics suggest something else to the wife. As a result, she spirals out of control and comes to a deranged conclusion: arson. However, while she’s spreading gasoline around the place and trying to light a match, she accidentally sets her fake pregnancy belly on fire. Once the flames catch hold, Caroline has no choice but to race across the cabin and arrive at the courtyard where everyone else has coincidentally gathered. She takes a climactic dive into the fountain, which marks the beginning of Filip’s own crashout. He finally snaps out of the role of the perfect host and delivers some eye-openers to his friends, holding up a mirror to the reality of their behavior. His speech is punctuated by an ambulance slamming into the side of the building, marking the end of their cabin confinement. In the end, the gasoline Caroline had spread never catches fire. In the end, everyone survives.
Why Did Caroline Fake Her Pregnancy?
One of the more surprising reveals of the story arrives right as the night begins to truly spiral out of control. As the weather worsens outside, the electricity supply shuts off in the cabin. As a result, Caroline goes down to the basement where she attempts to get the generator working. During this time, when she’s finally alone, it’s revealed that her pregnancy bump has been a fake all along. From the looks of it, Filip already knows, and his friends are really the only ones kept in the dark. The reason behind this aligns with the “fake it till you make it” attitude that the couple seems to have adopted in their lives. In reality, Caroline and Filip are expecting a child; only it’s through a surrogate mother. The duo has been trying to have kids for a long time. Nonetheless, they’ve faced various difficulties along the way.
Caroline underwent various miscarriages, and even IVF treatment didn’t work for them. Afterward, when they attempted to go down the adoption route, they continued to face roadblocks and defeats. Yet the couple kept their problems under wraps, refusing to share the truth of their lives even with their closest friends. This is because, as the night of the dinner has proven, their friendships are built on tension, grudges, and individual insecurity. They’re all too caught up in their own problems that they don’t notice the pain of the others. No one is willing to be honest with each other, and everyone would rather put on a charade or hide behind a fake pregnancy belly to get out of having the more difficult conversations in life.
Do Filip and Caroline Stay Together? What Happens to Their B&B?
Over the course of the night, almost every couple undergoes serious complications that could potentially end their relationship. However, Caroline and Filip seem to have drawn the short straw in that regard. The latter seems to be aware that their relationship has been on the rocks for some time. In fact, as revealed in his final monologue, he believes that even their attempts to have a child were attempts to fix their relationship with a new addition to the family. While Caroline remains unaware of the damage that their dynamic has sustained, Filip is not only aware of it but has also discovered its source. The couple has taken a huge risk with the Bed and Breakfast venture. Thus, its potential failure, paired with their inability to embrace defeat and desire to project the image of perfection out into the world, creates a recipe for disaster.
Throughout the night, Caroline has been neglecting her husband, despite claiming the event is in his honor. On the other hand, he consistently fails to communicate with his wife and instead seethes with frustration. In the end, the climactic confrontation among everyone allows for some of this frustrating laundry between the couple to be aired. In the aftermath, as Filip storms out, Caroline follows until she lies down beside him on the snow. This symbolizes the couple’s desire to correct their mistakes and move forward in life as well as in their relationship. Ultimately, this hopeful conclusion extends to their business. Henrik, who has indeed lost his position, can’t possibly invest in their business. Still, the B&B owners have hope that they will find a way to make things work.
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