Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Equinox’ On Netflix, Where A Danish Woman Tries To Find Out How Her Sister Disappeared 20 Years Ago

Perhaps you’ve heard the term “Scandi-noir” being thrown about in reviews of Scandinavian series. What it means is that series from countries like Denmark, Norway and Sweden that have been debuting on streaming services like Netflix and Acorn are dark and moody, usually containing some psychological elements that can be a little scary. Equinox, based on a popular Danish podcast, certainly fits in that category. Read on for more.

EQUINIOX: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We go up the toy-laden stairs of a house to the room of a 9 year-old girl playing with her dolls. She hears a truck coming and dashes downstairs.

The Gist: It’s high school graduation day for Ida (Karoline Hamm), the older sister of 9 year-old Astrid (Viola Martinsen). She’s on the back of a truck with friends, off to a party, but have made a stop at Ida’s parents’ house. Ida is a bit distraught, upset at something during what is supposed to be the best day of her young life. Her mother, Lene (Hanne Hedelund), tries to stop her from going to the party, but her father Dennis (Hanne Hedelund) says that Lene is being uptight.

That night, Astrid has a vision of the truck Ida and her friends are in braking hard, sending all the teens flying. Indeed, that night, the authorities come and say that the whole graduating class, except for 3 people, have disappeared without a trace.

Astrid, now a 30-year-old (Danica Curcic), wakes up from that recurring dream, haunted by her sister’s disappearance. She’s a radio host in her small town, doing a nighttime show where she takes oddball calls about oddball subjects, like superstition. She shares custody of her daughter Vera (Andrea Engelsmann Persson) with her estranged husband David (Zaki Nobel), who still doesn’t quite understand why she moved out.

One night at work, she gets a call on the air from Jakob Skipper, Ida’s boyfriend at the time of the disappearance. He claims he knows what happened the night of the disappearance; he’s one of the three graduates that didn’t disappear that night.

After that call, she decides to go to Copenhagen to investigate, and to do a show about Ida’s disappearance. She stays with her dad and his new wife, and he’s angry that she’s stirring things up in Ida’s disappearance once again. She looks for Jakob, but his older brother Mathias (Rasmus Hammerich) says he hasn’t been around for a long time.

Flashing back to 1999, young Astrid continues to have visions, usually of creepy male figures walking around; she gets to the point where she sleepwalks into the street. Those visions continue in Copenhagen, especially after she hears the videotaped interrogation of the three survivors, Jakob (August Carter), Amelia (Fanny Bornedal) and Falke (Ask Truelsen). She even envisions someone jumping off the roof of the building across the street from where she’s staying.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Equinox is a cross between Lost and any number of shows where someone tries to find out what happened to a loved one a couple of decades after they vanished or were murdered. It definitely fits in the “Scandi-noir” genre that most of Netflix’s original programming from Denmark and other Scandinavian countries falls into.

Our Take: Equinox is based on Tia Lindeburg’s podcast Equinox 1985; Lindeburg created the series, with Piv Bernth serving as the showrunner. The first episode is a surprisingly effective setup of Astrid’s story, going back and forth between 1999 and 2020 to give context to the pain Astrid has felt for 21 years over what is obviously a situation that hasn’t given her any closure.

We don’t yet have a lot of context about why Astrid has waited over two decades to try to look into Ida’s disappearance; we do know that it and the visions she has of it have troubled her enough for her to break up her marriage, and that the call from Jakob spurred her to action. But those missing pieces didn’t matter all that much in the first episode; there was more than enough tension and character development to let us know how much of an effect Ida’s disappearance has had on Astrid’s life.

It’s little details that come through in Curcic’s performance that are telling in this regard. She rubs her jaw over and over because she clenches it so tightly; even a mouth guard can’t keep her from feeling the pain of her TMJ problems. The change in her expression as she turns a light talk with David about him going out to a serious talk about the town seeing him with another woman is chilling. We just know how intense and serious Astrid is, without having to have everything explained to us.

But what the first episode accomplishes is that it shows us more than enough information to get us curious. For instance, we hear about an island during Falke’s interrogation, which the three survivors and Ida all went to. So that tells us that there’s something going on that’s beyond just a simple disappearance. Astrid’s visions are beyond just dreams about Ida; she sees things and beings that she can’t explain, and those visions have been going on for decades. Ida’s disappearance has led Astrid to a career talking about superstitions and the supernatural, so this feeds into those visions and vice versa. We also know that her father wants nothing to do with Astrid’s investigation and her mother is either dead or in a psychiatric ward somewhere, not able to forgive herself for not being able to stop Ida from getting on that truck.

In other words, the first episode of Equinox gives the viewer a chance to follow along with the story without having to make assumptions and connections in their own heads while watching. And in a psychological thriller like this, that’s a helpful start.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Astrid wakes up to a call from Mathias saying that Jakob threw himself off a building earlier that day, just like her vision. She then goes to the bathroom and sees a man lurking in the mirror; he disappears when she turns on the light.

Sleeper Star: Lars Brygmann plays Astrid’s father Dennis, who is so adamant that his daughter doesn’t open up this can of worms all over again, you have to wonder if he had something to do with Ida’s disappearance.

Most Pilot-y Line: Astrid tries to throw herself at David when she realizes he’s starting to move on. “You were the one who wanted this,” he tells her. “I don’t know what I want,” she replies. It’s not a horrible line, but it’s also an easy tell to indicate how lost Astrid is.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Equinox has the potential to be a taught psychological thriller with supernatural overtones. Of the shows we’ve seen in the Scandi-noir genre, it’s one of the better ones.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Equinox On Netflix