While the setup seems to be milking the culture clash to expose both sides as problematic in the same way (i.e. close-minded antisocial personalities in conflict producing social horror), the meditation on social niceties in pitting bohemian vs pompously elitist family dynamics is a ruse. For while the Danes may be morally 'right', as the husband eventually professes, this is essentially nullified when they don't possess basic survival instincts which are subjugated by their social fears. They make a lot of stupid mistakes, almost entirely though non-action, stalling in freeze mode instead of fleeing or fighting- the worst possible option of reptilian response. Right or wrong, they are the weaker class. The "because you let me" line works in terms of social horror, but has a deeper and more disturbing subtext, which is that this is a film willing to engage with social darwinism.
The Dutch family may appear to be emotionally labile throughout the narrative, but this too turns out to be a hunting strategy rather than their true selves. In the end, they are not making an emotional decision, but a practical one: antisocial personalities reign (which reminds me of
my last watch of The Parallax View in how that film implicitly suggests that we've evolved to a place where sociopaths have moved to the top of the food chain, and maybe even 'should' be there to enhance the kind of outcomes we see as ideologically valuable).
The Dane dad doesn't tell the mom about what he's seen partly because of fear- self-constructed barriers that stop tribe members from communicating even in crises- but they also haven't built or reinforced a trusted line of communication in order to default to collaboration. There's a sense that their marriage has been comprised of negatively reinforcing distancing and so there's an absence of skills to both independently engage with acute situations or collectively engage in problem-solving together. They don't possess even basic verbal skills, whereas the Dutch parents are communicating the entire film without ever saying a word to one another- their nonverbal communication is operating on a deeper intimate level, and they will be survivors for it. How fucked up is that.
I do wish the film ended differently. At first, the cut from the parents' deaths transitions onto what appears to be a utopia playground of families having organic, deserved fun, and for a moment I wondered if this was going to be a sick and brilliant twist: That these were the lost kids from the photos, so the Dutch parents are not actually killing the kids but bringing them to a 'better' place, 'saving' them from their parents who cannot take care of them. According to their warped survivalist rules, of course. I realize that we saw their other kid dead in a pool, but still, how insane would that have been? A Robin Hood gesture of delusional ethics that filtered kids back into families that have the capacities to survive animal threats. But then it seems like we're just going through the rotation again, back to a resort to find a new family- so
Funny Games or any number of horror films where the bad guys win and start their scheme over, negating the nuance the final act's twist established. A waste of rich potential.