Film

Metalhead

Name: Metalhead
Genre: Drama, Music
Released: 2013
Cast: Þorbjörg Helga Þorgilsdóttir, Ingvar E. Sigurðsson, Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson, Hannes Óli Ágústsson

Coming-of-age

Metalhead is a Icelandic drama about Hera, a teenager in 1990s rural Iceland processing her brother's death through heavy metal music. Shot in stark black and white, it's a portrait of grief and adolescent defiance—how we weaponize art against loss and the people around us. Quiet and devastating.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a quiet, grief-soaked coming-of-age story where the music is a lifeline rather than a soundtrack, and you like stillness that lets a single face carry the weight.

Skip it if you need plot momentum or a clear arc, since this one lingers on a stalled household and small humiliations, and its gloom rarely lifts for long.

What it asks of you: It moves slowly and sits with its silences, asking you to stay with a bleak, muted mood for an hour and a half with little relief along the way.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Farewell2019

A young woman navigates family, culture, and her own sense of displacement through a deliberately muted emotional register. Like Metalhead, it finds profound feeling in what isn't said, and in the space between worlds.

But The pacing is glacial and deliberately withholding. If you need emotional catharsis spelled out, you'll leave frustrated.

Under the Skin2014

Scarlett Johansson in an alien entity slowly observing human behaviour. Hypnotic, unsettling, and shot in a grainy, observational style that mirrors Hera's detached gaze on the world around her. Pure mood.

But There's almost no plot. Long stretches of silence and driving. The violence, when it comes, is genuinely disturbing and not cathartic.

Fish Tank2009

A British teenager dreams of hip-hop stardom while trapped in a bleak housing estate. Same DNA as Metalhead: art as escape, adolescent fury channelled into performance, the cruel gap between fantasy and reality.

But It's relentlessly grim and ends without resolution. The sexual violence is shocking and feels gratuitous to some viewers.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Metalhead

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Punk Syndrome2012

Both films understand punk and metal not as aesthetics but as survival mechanisms—ways of existing in a world that would prefer you didn't.

A Finnish documentary following a punk band whose members have intellectual disabilities. Music as dignity, as voice, as pure refusal. The exact same emotional argument as Metalhead but in non-fiction form, with real people and real stakes.

But It's a documentary, which some viewers dismiss out of habit. The audio is rough and sometimes hard to parse. You have to sit with the rawness rather than being transported by narrative.

Mustang2015

Five Turkish sisters live under suffocating control; they find freedom in music, dance, and defiance. Female adolescent rage and solidarity, constrained lives, and art as rebellion. Visually stunning and emotionally shattering.

But The cultural specificity might feel distant. The ending is bleak and offers no triumph, which some find punishing rather than cathartic.

A Ghost Story2017

Grief so abstract and estranging it becomes almost science fiction. Shot in black and white with huge empty spaces. It sits with loss the way Metalhead does: as something that doesn't resolve, just persists.

But The central conceit is strange and might feel pretentious. Very slow. A scene with pie-eating goes on forever and tests patience.

Kes1970

A working-class boy in Northern England finds transcendence training a hawk. Both films use a young protagonist and a singular passion to explore entrapment and the possibility of escape through connection to something wild.

But The dialect is thick and hard to follow. The school scenes are brutal. The ending is genuinely heartbreaking in ways that might feel manipulative.

Let the Right One In2008

A bullied Swedish boy befriends a vampire. Melancholic, atmospheric, and deeply concerned with adolescent isolation and the strange comfort of darkness. The black-and-white sequences especially echo Metalhead's visual language.

But It's a vampire film, which might feel gimmicky. Pacing is deliberate to the point of stasis. The violence involving children is disturbing.

The Piano1993

A woman in 19th-century New Zealand refuses to speak and communicates through piano music instead. Like Hera, a protagonist for whom art is not expression but survival—a way to exist when words fail.

But The sexual content is explicit and plays against romantic framing in ways some find uncomfortable. The colonial context is loaded and not always well-explored.

Winter Song2023

A Japanese minimalist drama about a woman and man in a near-empty house. If you loved Metalhead's quiet devastation and black-and-white cinematography, this takes that aesthetic and extends it to its furthest point.

But Almost nothing happens. There is no score. Two people exist in a room for nearly two hours. It requires a taste for extreme patience and ambiguity.

The Seventh Seal1957

Both use a young or young-ish protagonist confronting their own smallness in the face of death and finding meaning not in answers but in presence.

Bergman's medieval knight plays chess with Death. It's black and white, it's about mortality and how we fill the void it creates, and it moves with the same inexorable, quiet logic as Metalhead. Unbearably beautiful.

But It's deliberately philosophical and bleak. If you're not in the mood for existential cinema, it will feel like watching paint dry. Very of its era.

Pink Cadillac1989

Both films center on characters defined by what they've lost and what they refuse to become. The landscapes—Icelandic vastness versus American desert—both dwarf the human figures in the same way.

Clint Eastwood film about a bounty hunter and a woman on the run. Action movie, yes, but shot through with melancholy and a fascination with people trapped by circumstance. A genre film that contains Metalhead's emotional truth.

But It's slight and sometimes silly. The action sequences are functional, not thrilling. It's a '80s Eastwood film where he plays a washed-up version of his legend.