The Disappearance of Lorenskog is a well-written, slow-burning crime drama based on a semi-fictional retelling of a high-profile case that shook Norway to the core in 2019.
For those who don’t know, here’s the story: Tom Hagen, a Norwegian billionaire, left his home in Lorenskog one morning to work at the Futurum business park. During his absence, Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, his wife, was kidnapped and held for ransom.
Things don’t look good. There are signs of a fight at the house, and a letter left behind states that if Tom and his family call the police or the media, Anne will be injured or killed. Not only that, but the kidnappers also want to cash out the cryptocurrency Monero worth 9 million euros. Only then can it be brought back safely. They also say, which is scary, that they’ve been watching the family for a while and will know if he’s calling the police.
However, Tom calls the police and they launch a secret operation to find out who kidnapped Anne and why. They’re trying their best to keep it out of the news, but it’s only a matter of time before the media gets involved.
Through the eyes of different main characters, each of the 5 episodes looks at a different part of the case. Most of these different points of view relate to two main characters. Erlend is a crime reporter who has a personal interest in this case due to some dark things that have happened in his own life.
A woman named Jorunn Lakke is leading the police investigation. We follow her from the beginning and see all the ups and downs of her life including troubles at home and dead ends and fake stories connected to this case.
As you would expect from a Scandinavian crime drama, much thought has gone into the mood, tone and setting of this 5 part series. The characters are well developed and a lot of time is spent learning about their past and what they have to do with the disappearance of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen.
Given the strange nature of the case and the fact that it hasn’t been solved, it’s nice to see the show take a more realistic approach to making us both care about the people dealing with it and… also about the case itself.
However, if I had to be really harsh, I’d say Episode 3 is probably the weakest of the five chapters here. It comes in the middle of two episodes that focus almost entirely on Aleks and Erlend. While the chapter isn’t bad, it feels more like a filler before the last two episodes pick up again.
This show is similar in many ways to HBO’s The Staircase. Just like this dramatization of a famous real-life case, there are no definite answers to this question. There are many different ideas floating around, and some of these are explored at runtime.
The Disappearance of Lorenskog, on the other hand, is a tight, moody crime drama that sets a good example of a Scandinavian crime drama.
What happens when Lorenskog disappears?
The Disappearance of Lorenskog is the latest crime drama to hit Netflix. It’s a dramatic, partially fictional retelling of a high-profile case that shocked Norway in 2019. So what really happened?
So, here’s how the story goes. Tom Hagen, a Norwegian billionaire, left his home in Lorenskog one morning to go to work at the Futurum business park. Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, his wife, is kidnapped and held for ransom while he is away.
Things don’t look good. There are signs of a fight at the house, and a letter left behind states that if Tom and his family call the police or the media, Anne will be injured or killed. Not only that, but the kidnappers also want to cash out the cryptocurrency Monero worth 9 million euros. Only then can it be brought back safely. They also say, which is scary, that they’ve been watching the family for a while and will know if he’s calling the police.
However, Tom calls the police and they launch a secret operation to find out who kidnapped Anne and why. They’re trying their best to keep it out of the news, but it’s only a matter of time before the media gets involved.
When it appears all traces of blood in the house have been cleaned up and there are other strange things going on in this case, the clues don’t quite add up.
Tom Hagen was found guilty
18 months into the case, the police arrest Tom Hagen and the case has to go public. Police speak to the press ahead of time, but Tom Hagen denies all charges.
Tom says he and Anne had a happy marriage, and more research into his life seems to show he doesn’t know much about technology. That makes it unlikely that he would be the crypto kidnapper, so the police let him go ten days after his arrest.
Erlend, the journalist we meet in episode 2 and later, thinks Tom is guilty. He tells his colleague Aleks that Anne-will Elisabeth’s is unfair because it only helps her. Not only that, but we also see in flashbacks that Erlend’s father hits his mother, which also makes him feel very strong.
Erlend ends up working on an article that questions Tom’s role in all of this and examines how the mainstream media cleared him of suspicion.
What does Mattis think? Is it true?
A villain named Mattis talks to the police about a deal. He asks to be transferred to a prison with fewer rules if he can say anything important about the Lorenskog case. Episode 5 begins here.
Mattis tells them he has known Tom for a few years when Jorunn sits down to talk. Mattis worked with a man named Peter Vam to stage a scam to steal money from rich people. Together they used attractive women to put these men in bad situations, then took pictures of them and used them as blackmail.
Mattis found out that Vam was close to two men named Edon Kirap and Allan Kirap. It seems that the Kirap group was assigned to help Edon with a plan, so one night they took a van to Lorenskog. The next morning they came back with a woman they had taken with them. Is it possible that was Anne-Elizabeth?
The police try to arrest Peter because they seem to think this is a good lead. Despite being in Spain, he manages to escape and fly to Dubai. Now that he’s gone, the police can’t find him. Not only that, but the fact that Mattis mysteriously killed himself in prison seems to end this case. This pretty much ruins any chance they might have had to follow that lead.
How does the disappearance of Lorenskog end?
After working the case for a long time, Jorun Lakke loses hope and begins to doubt that they will ever be able to solve it. In the show’s final scene, she sighs and says, “I don’t know,” which is the perfect way to sum up this whole case.
Tom Hagen is still a successful businessman in Norway. He gives a live TV interview to talk about what happened, including his feelings that the police are trying to blame him. He’s not happy, which is to be expected. But there isn’t enough evidence to say if Anne-Elisabeth was kidnapped, if Tom Hagen killed his wife, or if there’s another piece of the puzzle that hasn’t been found yet.
Who was Ann? What was the case about?
In October 2018, Tom Hagen, a Norwegian billionaire, left his home in Lorenskog near Oslo for his office in the Futurum business park. As usual, he tried several times throughout the morning to call his wife, Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, but she didn’t pick up. At around 1:30 p.m., he worried about his wife’s health and went home. To his surprise, Anne was nowhere to be found in the house. A letter left behind and traces of a struggle in the house made it clear what had happened: someone had taken Anne out of her own home. Tom immediately called the police and they came to the scene and began investigating immediately. But the letter that was left behind was the biggest problem. In it, Anne’s kidnappers said they would hurt or kill Anne if Tom and his family went to the police or the media. In order for Tom to get his wife back, they asked him to send them a ransom of €9 million paid in the cryptocurrency Monero. But the people who took the family also told them directly that if they called the police or the press, they’d been watching them for a long time and would know immediately. In that case, they coolly say, they would put their own safety before money and run away after killing Anne.
