A young woman with a gun is patrolling through a gloomy abandoned factory. Over her headset she’s given orders: “shoot to kill”. Out of the darkness a figure lunges at her. It’s the stuff of a horror movie – but for the eight people inside the complex, the real terror is yet to come.
When your relationship is in trouble, being supportive of your partner’s work is a good way to bring the two of you closer together. For Tess (Madeleine Martin), that means signing up for a live-action role-playing (LARP) session with her partner Leo (Johan Hafezi) and his buddies. Nothing too complicated – just getting dressed up in post-apocalyptic outfits, heading out to a derelict factory complex out in the Swedish woods, and running around pointing fake guns at each other. Basically, it’s an adventure park with a nice holiday house (and a pond for skinny-dipping) next door. What could go wrong?
Across the next eight episodes of Dystopia, the answer is, pretty much everything.
Tess (Madeleine Martin). Source: Viaplay
What they don’t know – but we do, because it’s the very first scene in the series – is that years ago the complex was being used for sinister medical research. How else to describe experiments where hamsters were gassed to death and then (possibly?) given electric shocks to bring them back to life? If that wasn’t bad enough, there was a gas leak and while one of the team escaped to the airlock, his very pregnant partner didn’t get out in time.
Considering Leo and his friends have turned the complex into a full-blown playground for LARPers (they’ve slapped their “Dystopia” logo all over the entrances), not knowing this feels like a pretty serious failure of due diligence. Then again, experiments involving killing animals might not be something the old operators wanted to advertise. And if they were keeping that a secret, what else were they hiding from the world?
The session Tess has tagged along for is part of a dry-run to get the complex ready for the ten thousand hard-partying Germans they expect when they open in ten days. But there’s a problem: the generator keeps cutting out. Leo’s work partner Chrissy (Maja Rung) might say their setting is going to be “cooler than Munchen Biohazard”, but without power they don’t have a game for people to play.
Zacke (Eric Bolin) and Leo (Johan Hafezi). Source: Viaplay
Domenica (Lola Zackow) and Chrissy (Maja Rung). Source: Viaplay
As an organisation, Dystopia’s problems go deeper than just a (major) technical hitch. The group is divided, and Tess is seen by everyone else as an outsider. She’s only there to try and repair her relationship after she cheated on Leo, but it’s hard when he’s constantly off working – and that isn’t the only source of romantic tension within the group.
One of Dystopia’s big strengths is that it’s willing to take its time to set things up properly. Much of the first episode allows us to get to know the characters and the dynamics between them. Some are fun-loving, some are driven, some are sensitive. Some are already out the door, others are sticking around hoping a solution can be found. Not all of them are going to make it out alive.
Leo (Johan Hafezi) and Chrissy (Maja Rung). Source: Viaplay
Leo and his crew have one thing right: they’ve found an amazing location. The factory is a real source of menace and dread in Dystopia, even without LARP props like mannequins dangling from ropes. It establishes a creepy vibe right from the start that only gets worse as things go on, and the woods around the factory aren’t much better.
There’s a moment towards the end of the first episode where two characters are exploring deep in the factory when suddenly an unknown figure walks in front of the camera. It’s a startlingly effective jump scare, and there’s worse to come.
Jennifer (Erika Cardenas Hedenberg). Source: Viaplay
With 86 bookings locked in, letting Dystopia fall apart isn’t an option for Chrissy. But the solution she comes up with involves – well, it involves pulling a giant lever like something out of a Frankenstein movie that brings the factory back to life. But reactivating the factory means reviving all its dark secrets.
And there are things lurking deep inside that aren’t playing games.
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