© Kris Dewitte
Mr. K”, the English-language debut of Norwegian-Dutch director Tallulah H. Schwab, is a surreal and disorienting experience set in the confines of a seemingly inescapable hotel. Starring Crispin Glover as the titular Mr. K, a traveling magician who plans to check in for a single night, Schwab creates a Kafkaesque nightmare comedy where the ordinary is warped beyond recognition, and every attempt to find an exit leads deeper into the bizarre.
Directed by: Tallulah H. Schwab
Year: 2024
Country: Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Norway
Runtime: 96 minutes
From the moment Mr. K arrives at his hotel room and discovers a strange man lying under his bed and a maid standing silently in his closet, it is clear that this is no ordinary hotel. The atmosphere is filled with unease, amplified by an eerie sound design that makes the walls seem to breathe and pulse with life. The hotel feels alive, shaking and shifting, its secret doors opening to reveal crowds of people with musical instruments, marching bands that appear and vanish, and rooms that change location and purpose without warning. It is a place where the boundaries of reality are blurred and logic is seemingly absent.
The film’s production design is nothing short of phenomenal, with a color palette drenched in greens that evoke the whimsical yet unsettling style of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s work. The setting is at once dreamlike and nightmarish, filled with peculiar characters, such as two funny old French sisters, Ruth and Sara, who evoke the Tweedle twins from “Alice in Wonderland”, and a sense of perpetual disorientation. It is a world that seems to operate on its own set of rules, leaving both Mr. K and the audience scrambling to make sense of it all.
The presence of Crispin Glover, the lone American amidst a cast of European actors speaking English, further adds to the film’s unsettling strangeness. His performance is perfectly pitched between bewilderment and determination, grounding the film’s more fantastical elements in a human reality. His Mr. K is a figure trapped not just within the hotel’s ever-changing corridors, but in a maze of existential dread.
As the story unfolds, Mr. K is inexplicably drawn into the hotel’s inner workings, finding himself working in a kitchen as part of a collective, only to later try to lead a revolution when he realizes the hotel is physically shrinking. Yet, despite his efforts, most of the hotel’s peculiar inhabitants appear indifferent, preferring to maintain the status quo rather than seek freedom. Some see him as “the liberator,” but many have no interest in liberation. This is where “Mr. K” reveals itself to be more than just absurdist play for the sake of it, becoming an exploration of complacency, resistance, and the human tendency to accept the bizarre as normal. The film’s refusal to provide clear answers or a straightforward narrative is a bold choice by Schwab, challenging the audience to derive their own meanings amidst the chaos.
“Mr. K” is a film that will either baffle or beguile, but it will undoubtedly leave a lasting impression. Tallulah Hazekamp Schwab’s control over tone and atmosphere, combined with impressive production design and Glover’s compelling performance, creates a stunning bizarre puzzle.
“Mr K.” premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, where it screened as part of the festival’s Platform lineup
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