After debuting out of competition at Cannes with Panama, Serbian filmmaker Pavle Vučković is back with his sophomore feature, Frost, which has just had its world premiere in the Official Fantastic Competition of the Sitges Film Festival, Spain’s famed genre cinema event. In this unexpected informal diptych of a genre piece, Vučković plunges us into the emotional side of fantasy cinema by encouraging his viewers to be immersed in the irrational without expectation. While Frost is heavily bogged down by images tinged with an odd sense of exoticisation, it’s clear the filmmaker is striving for something bold and different in terms of representing the affective nature of mythology on screen.

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The inhibited but insistent middle-aged Mirjana (Kamka Tocinovski), a highly accomplished police detective based in Belgrade, travels to a small village in eastern Serbia to investigate the case of a missing young woman named Adela (Lara Dragović). There, she meets Gorica (Vesna Trivalić) and Father Jeremija (Mirko Vlahović), the parents of a young man who killed himself after encountering Adela. When strange elements start appearing and occurring in the community, the deeply rational policewoman moves to blame its inhabitants, only to be later confronted herself by the magical force that the residents warned her about.

The first half unfolds like a trope-heavy, straight police drama that world-builds by slowly integrating the more fantastical elements, but then, it all curiously gets tossed out in the second half for something much more extreme. The film’s latter portion - inspired by a myth from eastern Serbia - rapidly transforms into something completely unexpected and best left for the viewer to discover by themselves. Mirjana’s own suppressed emotions are challenged, and she is forced to confront the reality of a world beyond the status quo she has set for herself. While the shift is jarring, the movie also challenges the viewer to embrace this irrationality as well: we expect the film to evolve in one way, and it diverges completely.

With its intriguing diptychal structure, Frost leaves more questions than answers, but also struggles to ascend beyond its propositions and uniquely crafted environment, including an ethereal score haunted by deep strings, whistling tones and environmental sounds (music by Filius Blue and sound design by Ivan Zelić). Mythologies are shown on screen mainly as tidbits, inviting us to wonder what will happen next.

Ultimately, the feature is appreciated best as an introspective exercise: an exploration of what is suppressed and desires that are kept in the dark, rather than a batch of storyline threads to be followed from start to finish. However, the second half’s emphasis on Mirjana’s encounter with the supernatural being has an almost lurid, rather than enticing, feel to it. The admirable concept is rendered off-putting by its depiction of women’s bodies, which has a very uncomfortable gaze to it that feels disconnected from that of Mirjana’s.

Frost is a Serbian-Montenegrin-Macedonian-Croatian-British production by Plan9, in co-production with Film District, Black Hangar Studios, Telekom Srbija, Parangal Film, Black Cat Production, Telefilm, Cinerent and Art&Popcorn. The film is sold overseas by Elle Driver.