Valley Of Shadows is clearly a passion project that took much time, effort, and artistry, and I really wanted to like it. Director Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen’s debut feature is aesthetically a work of art. But like many forms of art, when you get up close to it, it loses its magic. It’s visually as beautiful as a Bob Ross painting, but like a Bob Ross painting tutorial, the cinematography and slow pace are soothing enough to fall asleep to–not exactly ideal for a drama-mystery.

Aslak (Adam Ekeli) is a young boy living with his mother, Astrid (Kathrine Fagerland) in a small village in Norway between the sea and mountains. The landscape and the eerie, hollow musical score is as barren and empty as their lives. After a tragic event occurs that Aslak struggles to understand, he ventures into the forest to find answers. Unfortunately, he only leaves us with more questions.

Valley Of Shadows is intended to follow the classic Scandinavian style of gothic storytelling; it is supposedly a modern-day fairytale where the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred in the eyes of a child. Aslak is young enough to be unable to understand the events around him but is just becoming old enough to gain a sense of self-awareness in his confusing and mysterious situation. But the film lacks the whimsicality, conflict, and resolution that make “fairytales” what they usually are. In this case, altering the traditional format of a fairytale does not serve the film any purpose.

We never learn what happened to Aslak’s drug-addict brother, who either was killed, or put in jail, or something else–the only real evidence we see of his existence is his “drug box” kept in an old shoe box under his bed. We never learn what was killing the sheep in the village; Aslak’s older friend believes it to be a werewolf, but low and behold, not a single allusion to werewolves are made at any other point in the film. We never learn who the mysterious man that Aslak meets in the woods is.

The initial idea of Valley Of Shadows is an intriguing one and quite possibly the only motivation to keep us going, plot-wise. But the sluggish speed at which it progresses only alienates the audience even more than its inability to find any resolution.

On the other hand, Valley Of Shadows is visually a work of art. Ekeli looks like a living porcelain doll, his ghostly pallor illuminated against the cool tones with contrasted lighting, akin to German Expressionist films that create an impending sense of dread. Each frame of the entire 90-minute film is composed as well as the best classical paintings of Norwegian landscapes and portraits of children of royalty, in the same vein as a predecessor: the very successful Scandinavian horror film Let The Right One In. Such visual attention to detail makes it easy to overlook the blunders of the plot, and makes the extremely long takes and drawn-out pauses a bit more palatable.

Though Valley of Shadows may have been satisfying for Gulbrandsen, it won’t quite be so for audiences. The aesthetic perfection of the film is like a pair of rose-colored glasses: all the red flags just look like flags.