There is, as Aunt Ada Doom oft told, “something nasty in the woodshed”. But it turns out, in the Netflix horror series Elves, to be nothing compared with what is in the woods themselves.The opening scene establishes, without much room for doubt, that whatever lurks among the cold pines of the fictional island of Aarmand, an isolated part of the Danish archipelago, is not to be messed with. Local farmer Møller (Rasmus Hammerich) tethers a cow in the middle of a blackened circle and legs it as an unseen horde of unknown – unless you’ve read the title – somethings descend and the poor bovine is scattered over a large area.Elves Season 1 Download
Pity, then, the Svane family, who are just arriving on the island for a quiet Christmas holiday – hardworking mum Charlotte (Lila Nobel) and dad Mads (Peder Thomas Pedersen) and their bickering children Kasper (Milo Campanale) and Josefine (Sonja Steen). Despite clear instructions to stick to the coast road to reach their holiday home, Mads cuts through some woodland and collides with something that leaves black goo on his bumper.But what? But what, in this six-part horror miniseries originally called Nisser, a word sometimes translated from the Danish into English as “gnomes” or “goblins” and, here, Elves, could this possibly be? Mum and Dad reckon the goo is oil or tar from the ferry crossing. Josefine, meanwhile, has tracked a trail of it heading towards a mysteriously fenced-off region of deeper forest (from which, I suspect, she could still pick up a tangy whiff of freshly slaughtered cow). Møller turns up in a truck and tells them all to føck øff his private land. The rest of the locals are barely more welcoming. It’s almost as if they have something to hide.