Quick Take: Jenny Slate’s dry humor and natural charisma make The Sunlit Night an enjoyable watch with a deep impact if you go in with an open mind.

The last time a movie was set in a Nordic country where the sun never set, a violent Pagan cult (and jilted girlfriend) wreaked havoc in horror master Ari Aster’s Midsommar. Eternal sunshine seems like the perfect breeding ground for confronting demons and facing the unknown. In director David Wnendt’s The Sunlit Night, Jenny Slate plays a struggling artist who faces her own personal horror on the idyllic Scandinavian coast– the fear of not living up to her full potential.

Francis (Slate) is struggling. Fresh off of a breakup, her sister announces she’s engaged, her parents announce their plans to divorce, and the Japanese artist-in-residency program she dreamt about falls through. With nothing to lose, she accepts an apprenticeship with Nils (Fridtjov Såheim), a straightlaced Norwegian master painter in the Northern islands of Norway. Meeting his expectations proves challenging, but it’s the tough love Francis needs to push her out of her comfort zone. Throughout her time on the island, she also meets an eccentric ex-pat who has dedicated his life to Viking re-enactments (Zach Galifianakis) and a New Yorker (Alex Sharp) who has come to give his father a proper and historical Norwegian burial. Through all of their interactions, Frances comes to realize that in death, and in this case the death of her expectations, is where true freedom lives.

Jenny Slate’s dry humor and natural charisma make The Sunlit Night an enjoyable watch with a deep impact if you go in with an open mind. The Norwegian landscape is jaw-droppingly beautiful and juxtaposed nicely with the film’s soundtrack curated by music supervisor Dan Wilcox. The Sunlit Night, based on the book of the same name by author Rebecca Dinerstein Knight, played at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Quiver Distribution will release The Sunlight Night on VOD this Friday, 7/17.