Terkel in Trouble 2004

In a darkly comic Danish coming-of-age tale, Anders Matthesen voices Terkel, a sixth-grade student at a secondary school who spends recess on a bench with his best friend Jason, a boy who always carries an iron pipe with him. During a casual moment, a man in a green sweater named Gunnar approaches and tells Terkel that he sat on a spider. Terkel shrugs it off, reassured that his jeans can be washed, but Gunnar’s presence lingers. Later, in Danish class, Gunnar walks in and announces that the previous teacher, Yvonne, has been killed by a car. The class reacts with a mix of shock and uneasy cheer as Gunnar takes on the role of the new substitute teacher, subtly shifting the classroom’s rhythm and tone.

At home, Terkel’s parents Sheila and Leon get married, a event that ripples through his life and the social world around him. At the wedding reception, two school bullies, Nigeland and Saki, pressure Terkel into stealing beer for them. When Terkel’s volatile, alcoholic grand-uncle Stewart Stardust confronts the bullies, he knocks them down, and Sten and Saki retaliate by blaming Terkel, deepening the bullying he endures. One day, an overweight classmate named Fat Dorit sends Terkel a love letter. The bullies taunt the two, labeling them a couple. Terkel wavers between defending Dorit and going along with the taunting, eventually uttering a cruel line that he would never “love that fat cow”—a moment that haunts him after Dorit’s heartbreak leads to a desperate act. Dorit’s suicide by jumping from a fourth-floor window then reverberates through the class, shifting loyalties and power dynamics in its wake.

In the aftermath, Sten and Saki draw closer to Terkel, gaining his protection and new standing, while his friendship with Jason becomes strained under the weight of the threats and fear that now fill their world. Terkel begins receiving multiple death threats at home and at school, and he grows increasingly paranoid, unsure who might be targeting him or why.

A school trip to the woods to study salamanders becomes a crucible for the characters. On the bus, Sten and Saki invite Terkel to sit with them, which strains Jason’s patience. In the woods, Terkel’s attempt to reconcile with Jason fails, with Jason accusing him of selling out. Terkel ends up sleeping in Sten and Saki’s tent, and he opens up about Jason’s aloof behavior. Sten reveals a painful truth—that Dorit was Jason’s sister—deepening Terkel’s fear that Jason might be orchestrating the threats in retaliation for his sister’s death.

Seeking safety, Terkel confides in Gunnar and ventures deeper into the woods. A terrifying sequence unfolds as a dead cat appears in his sleeping bag and a text arrives from Jason’s phone reading, “I’m coming to kill you.” Gunnar advises that the danger may be closer than he realizes, and Terkel calls Jason to reveal that he’s in safe hands, only to discover ringing sounds coming from Gunnar’s pocket. The disturbing truth emerges: Gunnar has authored the threats as revenge for the spider incident, and his manipulation reaches toward killing Terkel by proxy.

A desperate chase erupts through the trees. Gunnar corners Terkel and attempts a chokehold, but Jason intervenes, knocking Gunnar out with a pipe and saving his friend. The immediate danger seems to subside, but Gunnar resurfaces, and a brutal struggle follows as they fight for the weapon. In a fatal turn, a pipe strikes Gunnar in the head, an injury that appears to kill him, though his fate remains ambiguous as the scene shifts and the pair try to piece their bond back together.

As tensions ease, Jason’s life becomes entangled with a new presence, and Joanna enters the storyline, reshaping the dynamic between the pair. The narrative occasionally steps into meta territory, with Arne Nougatgren—the narrator in a hockey mask—attempting to wrap the tale in a moral, yet finding it hard to remember the exact takeaway. The film leaves viewers with a haunting, unresolved sense of possibility: Gunnar’s fate feels unsettled, and the line between truth, memory, and fear remains blurred as the woods and the school hold their quiet, uneasy secrets.