I suppose the first thing you should know about Terribly Happy is that it isn’t nearly as happy as its title makes it sound like it will be. Nope, not at all. More appropriate titles would be Terribly Morbid or Terribly Screwed Up but, for irony’s sake, Terribly Happy will do.

Unfolding like the neglected Danish bastard child of such masterworks as Fargo and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Henrik Ruben Genz’s atmospheric thriller is set in a small country town where cows sink into mysterious mud-filled lakes, and mute children wander the streets at night pushing baby carriages. Sent from Copenhagen to police the small town is Robert (Jakob Cedergren), an officer who was dispatched to the area under mysterious circumstances. Initially weirded out by the local yokels, Robert is thrust into something greater when one dies and an investigation digs up some unwanted secrets.

It’s clear from the get-go that Genz is shooting for a Lynchian thriller, with his setting that teeters on the fence between reality and fantasy mixed with dark humor and unusual characters, and, to some degree, he does succeed, but putting it bluntly: Terribly Happy isn’t weird enough to be put next to Blue Velvet or other similarly brooding atmospheric thrillers. Perhaps if this had arrived on the scene pre-Lynch, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece, but the uninspired characterization (domestic violence as a main conflict? Show me something I haven’t seen before, please) places the film in the realm of the “okay” as opposed to the “excellent.”

That’s not to say that Terribly Happy is a normal film. It’s not in the least, I assure you, but compared to other films of the same ilk, it simply doesn’t have the same punch that one gets from seeing the depravity or grotesqueness that directors such as Lynch and the Coen brothers don’t shy away from subjecting their audiences to. Allusions are made to darker past events which, for the sake of spoilers, I won’t delve into. While this is eerie in the beginning, it soon becomes tiring. This is one of the only times I wished a film was more disturbing. If those extra buttons were pushed, Genz’s film would have probably been a more enjoyable experience.

As it stands now, Terribly Happy skirts on the edge of being terribly mundane more than anything else. It shows a large amount of promise as not only a dark comedy but an excellent and horrifying thriller, but any potential is somewhat wasted with the film’s tame approach to its subject matter and situations. I’d never think a film that has several beatings and murders to be dull; nevertheless, the pacing of the narrative that Ganz has constructed made me drift off several times. Perhaps this is my pseudo-American viewpoint on a film coming out (while not exclusively all about the big-budget guns and violence, it is appealing sometimes), but if only Terribly Happy was more sensationalistic or controversial, perhaps it would achieve the level of greatness I know it’s capable of reaching.