In her diary, a woman records information about utterly banal work she has undertaken around her mountain home. But she does not do so out of boredom, nor with any belief that someone will read it. In fact, she doesn’t even want to write but she feels she must do so in order to keep from losing her mind. The woman’s sanity has been imperiled ever since she found herself cut off from the surrounding world by an invisible and impenetrable wall. The movie builds up a species of generic tension as it investigates the character and behavior of a person placed in absolute isolation. Despite the fact that the film to a certain extent employs the wall as a metaphor, a sense of horror permeates the film. Like von Trier in Antichrist, the director places his protagonist within a magical landscape, yet the picture goes beyond his work with the setting, coming across as a subconsciously realistic dream with a single (thus all the more disquieting) alien element. As a result, even entirely natural objects appear threatening although in reality they are not the source of danger.