Rift

• Rift was shot in just 15 days on location in Hellissandur, Iceland, during the tail end of winter — the wind chill was so brutal that actors' lips went numb, making it hard for them to tell if their lines were even coming out right.
• The film's original Icelandic title is 'Rökkur' (meaning twilight/dusk); it was released internationally under the title 'Rift' and received development support from the Icelandic Film Centre.
• Rift had its world premiere as the closing film of the 40th Göteborg (Gothenburg) International Film Festival in February 2017, then had its North American premiere at Outfest in Los Angeles, where director Erlingur Thoroddsen won the Artistic Achievement award.
• Breaking Glass Pictures acquired North American distribution rights to the LGBT horror film in 2017 ahead of a festival run and VOD/DVD release.
• Director Erlingur Thoroddsen, a Columbia University MFA Film Directing graduate ('13), had previously made the horror feature Child Eater (2016) before writing and directing Rift.
• The film's atmosphere was built with a tiny two-person camera crew — DP John Wakayama Carey and gaffer Adam Uyemura — who leaned on Iceland's natural, near-permanent winter twilight light rather than heavy lighting rigs or CGI.

Einar has been dead since before Gunnar's arrival—the 'call' was a supernatural lure using guilt and unresolved romantic attachment as bait. The cabin is a pocket of the afterlife, and Gunnar's presence there means he's already crossed over without realizing it. The recurring imagery of doors and thresholds supports this.

The entity isn't supernatural at all but a manifestation of the relationship's emotional violence. Every 'attack' maps onto a real moment of psychological damage between Gunnar and Einar—the possessiveness, the isolation, the way Einar's trauma became a cage for both of them. The cabin is their relationship, literalized.

The previous occupant didn't vanish—he became the thing outside. The film's hints about the area's history suggest the entity is what happens to anyone who stays too long: consumed and repurposed as the next lure. Einar is mid-transformation, which explains his erratic behavior and why he specifically called Gunnar rather than anyone else.

Gunnar gets a panicked 3 AM call from his ex-boyfriend Einar, who's fled to his parents' remote cabin in Iceland's frozen nowhere. Something is out there. Something that keeps circling the house, pressing against windows, never quite showing its face. What starts as a rescue mission curdles fast—a nearby farm has its own unsettling history nobody wants to discuss, and Einar's behavior swings between traumatized victim and something far worse. As the long dark settles in, Gunnar realizes too late that he hasn't come to save anyone. He's walked straight into something that's been waiting for him, specifically, all along.