Jar City (2008)

Unnerving and emotional, this police thriller has an unnerving breadth and depth, as a murder case opens a decades-old inquiry that brings all kinds of dark creepiness with it. It's like an Icelandic twist on Seven.

Kormákur, who made the highly original 101 Reykjavik, is clearly saying something pessimistic about his homeland and, as a film-maker, has the means to do so to some effect.

The burden of this Icelandic procedural thriller will put a chill in your bones, if the lugubrious, wind-whipped coastal setting hasn't done already.

A murder story in the grungy-misanthropic style of Kormákur’s 101 Reykjavik, but without the plaintive wit or probing compassion.

I’ll admit that I struggled to keep up with some of the more intricate twists and turns, but things come together for a shocking and memorable finale.

Refusing to spoonfeed its audience, this is a dark, convoluted thriller, tightly scripted and richly atmospheric.

Bleak surroundings and grim humour create a suitably sombre mood, but in the wake of juicy police procedurals like Dennis Lehane adaptations Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, this is disappointingly straightforward stuff.

The disinterring of corpses makes this film almost too ghoulish for its own good, but Iceland's top director Baltasar Kormákur wraps it up in his distinctive frostbitten style.

It's an intriguing puzzle that held me gripped until the very end.

It’s a terrific piece of direction from Kormákur. Everything, from the look of the film, to the brilliantly unsettling use of food as a recurring motif, is judged perfectly.