HorrorGhouls – Page 19 – Horror Ghouls

Dead Snow 2 (2014)

Posted on March 22, 2024December 21, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Dead Snow 2 (also known as Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead) starts where the previous film left off, at full speed, where the only survivor, Martin (Geir Vegar Hoel), with an arm less due to cutting it off with a chainsaw after he got bitten. Things doesn’t look too good and when he thought that he’d come to peace with the zombies by giving them their precious box of gold, he forgot to add a golden coin which he had in his pocket. And of course, it isn’t over until Herzog claims that gold and has killed the last body count.

Things get more messy when Herzog attacks Martin’s car, which escalates with a truck that rips off Herzog’s arm that falls into the car with Martin. After it all ends with a car crash, Martin gets brought to the hospital where things get even more fucked-up. Because when he wakes up, the doctors have stitched together Herzog’s arm into his freshly sawed-off limb. Doesn’t sound too bad at first, but it turns out that the arm is something straight from Evil Dead II. But along comes an upgrade with some superpowers, which he has to learn to control.

Things are still pretty normal so far, but it gets out of control when Martin accidentally kills one of the patients, who’s a young kid. Yes, children gets killed here. Not just one, but a few. Oh my. All from kids playing in a sandbox to toddlers in their strollers. So be sure to have the whambulance ready on speed dial.

Anyway, now that Martin is in the deepest shit, with not only Nazi zombies on his tail, he’s now the number-one suspect in the country for killing his friends in the mountains. Martin needs some assistants to get out of this mess, and quickly. The kid he accidentally killed some moments ago told him something about a trio of zombie hunters, called Zombie Squad, from the USA. This group is led by Daniel (played by the Freaks and Geeks actor Martin Starr). With him, he has the two most annoying Star Wars nerds that think every snowy mountain in Norway is the filming location of Hoth. Huh, well, someone has to tell them that Dead Snow 2 was actually filmed in Iceland, for whatever reason.

More blood, more guts, more violence, more action, more plot, more fun, more evil Nazi motherfuckers, more insanity and other surprises is what to expect from Dead Snow 2. And this time Herzog also has a tank which he don’t waste any time to use. BANG!!!

Dead Snow 2 is a sequel done right on every level which surpasses the original like a sledgehammer. The film is also rich on locations where the distinct mountain landscapes of Iceland makes a grim and majestic appearance in its one unique way, even though it’s all supposed to take place in Norway. Alongside with the Zombie Squad, we have some new characters to join the epic journey to the final battle of Herzog and his army. The humor is also amped up with more gallow with a tone far more absurd and wacky than the first one, where Troma meets the early works of Peter Jackson. And it all works great like a slippery dick in a pussy, or like kuk i fitte, as we say in Norwegian. We also have some really fun kills where all from old folks in wheelchairs to kids, gays, and priests aren’t safe, and some brutal home invasion scenes. And without spoiling, unlike the trailer, there’s also a nice and inventive homage to The Return of The King here that fits perfectly. Even though the snow itself seems to have melted, it’s as fun, epic and wild as it can be. Skål, cheers and Sieg Heil!

According to Tommy Wirkola, the script for Dead Snow 3 has already been written years ago where there’s a hint of bringing Hitler himself to the surface. The sad thing is that actor Geir Vegar Hoel, who also worked as co-writer for this one, died in 2020 of cancer at age 47. RIP. How his passing will affect the rest of the franchise remains to be seen and now that it has already gone ten years since the release of this film, it seems more unlikely a third installment will happen. We can hope.

Both films are available on DVD/Blu-ray on the international market and can be dug up from Cd Universe and Amazon. And guess what: they’re also on Tubi!

Director: Tommy Wirkola
Writers: Tommy Wirkola, Geir Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen
Original title: Død Snø 2
Country & year: Iceland, Norway, 2014
Actors: Geir Vegar Hoel, Ørjan Gamst, Martin Starr, Jocelyn DeBoer, Ingrid Haas, Stig Frode Henriksen, Hallvard Holmen, Kristoffer Joner, Amrita Acharia, Derek Mears, Bjarte Tjøstheim
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2832470/

Prequel: Dead Snow (2009)

Dead Snow (2009)

Posted on March 19, 2024September 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

First off, here’s a drinking game: Take a great shot of karsk for each time Norway/Norwegian is mentioned in this review. Now – Just like Cold Prey, we have Dead Snow, which was also a big deal upon its release back in 2009. Because of this one, we now had our first Norwegian zombie movie to finally show off, with Nazis even. And a lot of red, blood-soaked snow while the Easter sun is shining bright. Another note for the Norwegian film history books. Dead Snow became a hit at the Sundance festival that kick-started the fruitful career of Tommy Wirkola, who’s since made several films in Hollywood – most notably the Christmas action/horror flick Violent Night (2022) with John Harbour in the main role.

Dead Snow opens appropriately enough with Edward Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, as someone is getting chased in the mountain forest and killed by a group of, yes you guessed it, zombies. Zombies in Norway, you say? Huh, that was new. Thought they only had trolls, gnomes and brunost. Yes, but these aren’t Norwegian zombies, you see, so get ready for an upcoming history lesson. After this short and quick adrenaline-filled opening, we meet our group of body-counts/friends of four medical students who are on their way to a mountain cabin in Øksfjord, far up in the northern countryside to celebrate Easter, get drunk on beer and moonshine, party hard and the luckiest ones gets to fuck in the shithouse.

The party mode gets put on hold for a minute when our group of friends gets an unexpected visit from a hiker. And this guy has seen some dark shit, for sure, his face can tell. He gives them a history lesson of the notorious Nazi colonel Herzog, who with his death squad team occupied the area during WW2. They did gruesome things to the locals over a span of three years, and as our hiker says in his beautiful northern dialect:

Det hær va nånn onde SATANS jævla! Wich is best translated as: They were some EVIL motherfuckers!

To cut his story short: Herzog and co. stole a dose of valuables when the war was over and tried to escape over the mountains where they seemed to disappear. Legend says that they froze to death and there’s an evil lurking over the place that must not be awakened. Yeah, whatever. They only scoff at him and don’t think much of it afterward, because who in the right mind would. So, who wants another beer? It isn’t until they find some hidden old valuables and gold in the cabin crawlspace that the plot starts to thicken. Because, guess who also wants to claim that gold, other than the Leprechaun.

Nazi zombies aren’t something new, nor was it with Dead Snow. We can actually rewind all the way back to the 1940s and dig up the corpses of King of the Zombies and Revenge of the Zombies and the terrible cult-schlock from 1981 that is Jean Rollin’s Zombie Lake, and more. But, of course, in a cold, winter-filled Norwegian setting, this was something we never thought we’d see on a big screen. Especially considering that a film like this would have been completely banned in a gnome country like this, or at least cut to pieces to the unrecognizable if it was made in the VHS era.

The effects are nice and juicy and the film goes full-out with the carnage and what they had in the gore-department. Eyes get poked out in Fulci-style, heads ripped in half, bodies ripped to shreds, people hanging from someone’s fresh ripped-out intestines from a cliff as they fight zombies, some general hack and slashing and its list of references. And of course, we have some glorious chainsaw action. Approx 400 liters of fake blood was used here. Not too shabby for being the first Norwegian zombie movie.

It’s all done with a dose of humor with a great group of actors in some very likable roles. My favorite is Bjørn Sundquist, one of the finest legacy actors we have in Norway. His screentime is short but none other than him would be able to tell the backstory of Herzog in such a serious deadpan manner like he did. However, some of the humor may not land as much on the non-Norwegian audience, especially the classic scene towards the end with the tunes and lyrics of Åge Alexandersen’s Min Dag.

It also shows that this is an early film of a newcomer. It’s of course a big step forward after Wirkola’s debut with Kill Buljo in technical terms. The pacing keeps a steady track, it’s overall fun and entertaining with a lot of energy and some great use of nature scenery. But still, there are some rough edges here. Some choppy and clunky editing choices prevent some of the death scenes to shine and breathe, and the ending gives the impression that the budget just said stop. If Tommy Wirkola already had the sequel in mind, I don’t know, but Dead Snow 2, which came five years later, surely makes this more of a warm-up, or a vorspiel, as we usually say in Norway before the big party. Så det e bare for dåkk kjære hæstkuka å håll sprit’n klar.

Director: Tommy Wirkola
Writers: Tommy Wirkola, Stig Frode Henriksen
Original title: Død Snø
Country & year: Norway, 2009
Actors: Geir Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kasseth Røsten, Jeppe Beck Laursen, Jenny Skavlan, Ane Dahl Torp, Bjørn Sundquist, Ørjan Gamst
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1278340/

Sequel: Dead Snow 2 (2014)

RIDE BABY RIDE – Horror Short

Posted on March 17, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

After an unbearably creepy negotiation with some skeevy car guys, a mechanic has to fight off a demonic monster inhabiting her dream 1978 Camaro.

Ride Baby Ride is a fun horror short about a Christine-like car sold by two creepy dudes to an unsuspecting mechanic!

Director: Sofie Somoroff
Writer: Sofie Somoroff
Country & year: USA, 2023
Actors: Celina Bernstein, Anthony Richard Pagliaro, Sam H. Clauder II
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt28493032/

Kuso (2017)

Posted on March 15, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

– I LOVED this earthquake! It was the best one I’ve ever seen. All my enemies are DEAD! HAHAHAAA…!

And the earthquake we’re talking about is the one that took place in Los Angeles in 1994. One of the survivors from that brutal event was the eleven-year old Steve Ellison, aka Flying Lotus. 23 years later he would release his first feature film which took a lot of inspiration from the trauma of being an earthquake survivor as a child, and his overall fear of skin diseases and probably a laundry list of other phobias that followed. He also wanted to show how ugly people could be. Show their ugly asses, as he said. And ‘boy, he sure fucking did. This is the type of film that people like John Waters and Harmony Korine would gladly show on their first dates. Take that as a warning, if you will.

So, what’s Kuso really about? What’s the plot here? Uhm… yeah, good question. We’re in a trippy and surreal post-apocalyptic world where people have gone completely batshit insane while having their faces infested with big, nasty zits. The world of Mad Max is a walk in Disneyland in comparison. Here they don’t eat dog food straight from the cans but rather things such as a solid menu of stomach-turning “food” that includes worms and…bodily waste. Scat porn, several viewers say, and that’s not so far from it. This is juicy body horror to the extreme, disgusting and revolting, and if you have some certain boundaries when it comes to such, take also this as a warning. At the same time, it’s all done with a pitch-black sense of humor, so it’s not to be taken seriously. Still, there are moments here that even got a little too much for me, and my melted brain felt the after-effects while I slept through the following night.

But what is it really about? We follow a group of people who deal with their separate meaningless lives in their own post-apocalyptic environment. The film works more or less like an anthology with four vignettes which we bounce back and forth from: Royal, Mr. Quiggle, Smear and Sock. In between the segments we have some insane acid-trip scenes that even Terry Gilliam could be jealous of. It’s all dream logic and if you could livestream someone’s deepest cocaine-filled fever dream on a monitor screen, I wouldn’t be too surprised if this was the result. I don’t see much point in even trying to break down the segments. I would also lose the little I have left of my own sanity if I did. It’s just pure, perverted, unfiltered, experimental art-house madness where you can never, ever guess what’s about to happen next. Very graphic and visual, filled with details and even more unpredictable what-the-fucks you can imagine, and as far from mainstream audience-friendly as it can get. An overall unique experience for the senses that you would never watch with your mom and dad. And just to quote the director himself: This is definitely a movie for a certain kind of person.

Kuso was first distributed by Shudder and is also available on a DVD/Blu-ray combo on Amazon. The film is here reviewed from a very rare DVD edition from Sweden, just to point out.

Director: Flying Lotus
Writers: David Firth, Flying Lotus
Country & year: US, 2017
Actors: Hannibal Buress, George Clinton, David Firth, Arden Banks, Byron Bowers, Shane Carpenter, Angel Deradoorian, Regan Farquhar, Pretty Ricki Fontaine, Zack Fox, Tim Heidecker, Bob Heslip, Anders Holm
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6131712/

The Amazing Bulk (2012)

Posted on March 12, 2024September 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

By looking at the poster, you’d expect this to be one of the numerous mockbusters from The Asylum. But The Amazing Bulk is so much, much worse and not something you can fully be prepared for witnessing, even with your own eyes. Imagine if Sin City was written by Tommy Wiseau and directed by Neil Breen with the cheapest-looking green screen background effects from some Nintendo 64 games. There you have it. So yeah, this is a doozy one.

The plot goes like this: The young scientist, Henry Howard, is developing some kind of amazing purple serum for the government. The plan is that this serum will cure the world of famine and turn anyone who injects it into superhumans. Henry is also a grumpy-pants who mostly wears a frown which I honestly thought James Rolfe had trade marked. Anyway, Henry is in love with Hannah and wants to marry her. The problem is that Hannah also happens to be the daughter of General Darwin, who refuses Henry to marry her until after he has the serum ready.

All odds seem to be against poor Henry, and after being robbed on his way home after a date with Hannah, he’s had enough and decides to try the serum. Since there’s no budget here, don’t expect much of a transformation scene. Some dark CGI clouds covers the screen until it fades away and in front of us we have The Not So Amazing Bulk: a purple, retarded, babyface-looking, dickless stock cartoon monster with only one or two animations. He stomps at thugs and bad guys, but when he’s confronted by the only two lousy police officers in the city, he runs like a soy-filled bitch as if he’s crapped his pants.

And in a castle somewhere where it’s dark and gloomy and bats are flying everywhere, we meet Dr. Werner von Kantlove and his braindead cute-as-a-poodle wife Lolita. Dr. Kantlove is a wobbling super villain who looks like a cross of Javier Milei’s wig and a shady Nickelodeon producer who likes to sniff the bare feet of little girls. So, what’s his agenda? Just to blow up the moon. The Bulk now has a nemesis to take care of, but there’s more. Much more. The Amazing Bulk is a treasure chamber of ineptitude awesomeness, and when you think you’ve seen the worst, you’ll be surprised.

The film is directed by Lewis Schoenbrun and the only post on his trivia section says that he’s a fan of Stanley Kubrick. Who isn’t. His short Wikipedia page can tell us that he was born in 1958, has worked in the film industry since the 1970s and made his magnum opus The Amazing Bulk at the age of 52. Having that in mind, it’s almost impossible to even suggest that this was made with even the smallest nugget of seriousness. Well…

There’s a rare interview of the man where one can already tell by his picture that he’s certainly that kind of guy who’d make a film like this bad on purpose. The intention was to make a film in the same spirit as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Speed Racer, and clearly Sin City with some elements of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He bought a whole package of digital stock effects of figures, backgrounds, foregrounds, everything for 2,000 dollars, while a group of amateur actors used a treadmill to give us the illusion that they are walking in the environment as the background scrolls behind them. The whole thing took only five days to shoot in a garage in California with a complete budget of 14.000 dollars. 14.000 spent on what? God knows. Every single scene here is green screen filled with the shittiest cartoon backgrounds you can imagine. It looks worse than a YouTube skit from 2006.

After the film got the reaction it clearly deserved, with people almost dying from laughing, director Shoenburn decided to pull a Tommy Wiseau to say that the film was actually meant to be a comedy, you dummy. I would believe him, if it wasn’t for his Jupiter-sized ego getting in the way of commenting about the negative reviews. Because, in his mind, people are just jealous of not being a film director like him. Uhm, okay. Someone please pull his head out of his ass before he suffocates. During the past twelve years, he’s been retired from directing and has since worked at the International Academy of Film and Television as a teacher in the Philippines. Good for him.

The film gets ~~better~~ worse and more batshit as it goes on with scenes and logic that could only come from the brain of a six-year-old. So we thought. Two grown-ups actually wrote the script. One of my favorite moments is the chase scene between the Bulk and the two police officers as they run through a completely empty and lifeless city. I can’t describe how mindbogglingly horrendous the effects are, but we have a classic moment where the Bulk makes a car swirl in the air and lands on one of the officers. And the size of the car is the same, if not smaller, than the person. Top tier filmmaking, where everyone should take notes. Some of the effects looks like they were made in MS Paint while others are in such low resolution that the only thing we see is a blurry mess. The Amazing Bulk is a demented trainwreck of a shitshow that I can’t recommend enough if you like funny-bad movies. Truly a masterpiece in its category.

The film is available on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing and can be streamed on Tubi.

Director: Lewis Schoenbrun
Writers: Keith Schaffner, Jeremiah Campbell
Country & year: US, 2012
Actors: Terence Lording, Shevaun Kastl, Randal Malone, Juliette Angeli, Jed Rowen, Deirdre V. Lyons, Mark E. Fletcher, Mike Toto, Meghan Falcone
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1788453/

YOU WILL NEVER BE BACK – Horror Short

Posted on March 10, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Ana encounters an electrical black hole in her apartment building hallway, after which everything seems the same yet isn’t.

You Will Never Be Back (original title No podrás volver nunca) is a creepy and strange horror sci-fi short!

Director: Mónica Mateo
Writer: Mónica Mateo
Country & year: Spain, 2020
Actors: Ximena Vera, Chumo Mata, Laura De Pedro,
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt13266132/

My Little Eye (2002)

Posted on March 8, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In a remotely located house, five contestants have agreed to take part on a reality webcast, where they have to spend six months there without anyone leaving. If they manage to do it, they will win $1 million, but if just one of the contestants leaves, everyone loses. All seems fine and exciting, but of course, a lot of tension between the contestants starts to rise after a while. Since they cannot leave the house, they get packages of food, and one day one of these packages contains a letter claiming that one of the contestant’s grandfather has died. And that’s not all: it also includes a gun with five bullets, one for each contestants. One of them, Emma, finds strange messages from someone who might be a person from her past. All kinds of weird things start happening, but they believe it might all be orchestrated by the people running the show, in order to trick them into leaving and thus losing the prize money. None of them have any idea what’s actually going on…

My Little Eye is a British horror film from 2002, directed by Marc Evans, where the plot is of course inspired by the reality TV show Big Brother, and the title refers to the guessing game “I spy (with my little eye)”. Prior to its release it had a test screening of a four-hour version of the film, which was pretty disastrous and all distribution interest died immediately. Eventually, though, the film was cut into less than two hours of playtime, and ended up getting released in theaters. The director was worried that his directing career would go straight into the shitter if this movie flopped, as his previous two films hadn’t fared well. And even though the response to the movie was quite unenthusiastic, it became a surprise sleeper hit. Lucky for Marc!

While Big Brother is apparently still a thing even today, it was quite popular upon the show’s initial release in 1999 and the upcoming years. Thus, My Little Eye was released at a time where pretty much everyone could draw the parallels between the popular reality show and the plot here about the five contestants locked inside a house. The setup is interesting, and it’s offering a claustrophobic and mysterious atmosphere. The tension slowly builds, and while you know something’s wrong you keep wondering what’s actually going on. While never offering any actual scares, there are some pretty effective scenes here and there, especially some of the shots done in night vision which comes off as both creepy and unsettling. The pacing is a bit slow, where you get a lot of character building at first, but this enhances the effect when the mysterious incidents start happening.

Overall, My Little Eye is a solid low-budget thriller with a creepy atmosphere, and well worth checking out.

Director: Marc Evans
Writers: David Hilton, James Watkins
Country & year: UK, US, France, Canada, 2002
Actors: Sean Cw Johnson, Kris Lemche, Stephen O’Reilly, Laura Regan, Jennifer Sky, Bradley Cooper
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280969/

My Little Eye – int trailer from PPC Film on Vimeo.

Summer of 84 (2018)

Posted on March 5, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It’s the summer of 1984, where there are no mobile phones, no TikTok, and kids actually spend time together outside. What a time to be young! A fifteen year old, Davey Armstrong, works a paper route and spends time with his friends Dale, Curtis and Tommy. They live in Cape May, where a total of thirteen teenage boys have disappeared over the course of a decade. None of their disappearances have ever been connected, but after a local newspaper receives an anonymous letter from someone claiming to be their killer, or the Cape May Slayer, Davey starts suspecting his neighbor Wayne Mackey who is a popular police officer. His friends don’t put much value into his suspicions, though, as Davey is known for being easily drawn to all kinds of conspiracy theories and urban legends. Things change when a boy who Davey claims was inside Mackey’s house, ends up on a milk carton just a few days later. His friends agree to help him with the investigation of his suspicious neighbor, in the hopes of revealing him as the Cape May Slayer.

Summer of 84 is a horror film from 2018, directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissel. It was written by Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, to a fair amount of praise as many of the critics called it one of the best horror films of 2018. Since the main cast in the movie are teenagers and it’s set in the 80’s, some may think of the popular Netflix show Stranger Things, but they can’t really be compared. Summer of 84 is more like The Goonies turned into a mystery thriller, and while you’ll definitely get your fair share of the 80’s with the fitting soundtrack and certain elements from that era, this movie ventures into a much darker road.

As we follow Davey and his friends, we watch them do regular stuff like meeting in their tree house, watch dirty magazines, talk about who is the hottest girls in the neighborhood, and so on. Just normal teenage-boy stuff. When their attention is shifted onto a possible serial killer next door, we still have a bit of that whimsical Goonies-vibe. You’re not really sure what to expect, which makes it quite suspenseful. It also has quite a few little easter eggs: one of the missing boy posters displays one of John Wayne Gacy’s victims, and when the boys are in the clubhouse Tommy drinks from a bottle of MacReady’s Whiskey, which is a nod to The Thing (1982). While the first part of the movie builds up rather innocently when the kids are trying to figure out if Mackey really is a serial killer, offering both suspense and a few lighthearted chuckles here and there, it pretty much makes a 180 during the final act.

Summer of 84 is not your typical serial killer film, but offers something quite suspenseful and enjoyable. While some people really hated the ending of the movie, to the point where some said it literally ruined the entire movie for them, I personally found the choice for a dark and somewhat edgy ending to ground the movie into even more horror themed realism, and I’m glad they had the balls to do it this way.

Directors: François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell
Writers: Matt Leslie, Stephen J. Smith
Country & year: Canada, 2018
Actors: Graham Verchere, Judah Lewis, Caleb Emery, Cory Gruter-Andrew, Tiera Skovbye, Rich Sommer, Jason Gray-Stanford, Shauna Johannesen, William MacDonald, Harrison Houde
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5774450/

PLAY ME – Horror Short Film

Posted on March 3, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A woman wakes in a car with no memory of how she got there, and a man tied up in the back seat. Stranger still, she finds an audio recording with her voice telling her what to do next.

Play Me is a simple yet suspenseful horror short, by the same director that also made Other Side of the Box!

Director: Caleb J. Phillips
Writer: Caleb J. Phillips
Country & year: USA, 2023
Actors: Lindsey Garrett, Josh Schell
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt23642400/

Cold Prey (2006)

Posted on March 1, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

– Herre hær kjæm te å gjør littegrainnj vondt. E du klar? Æ tælle te tre.

And no, it wasn’t my keyboard that just had a stroke. It’s the Norwegian for – This will hurt a little. Are you ready? I’m counting to three. Also in the dialect of trøndersk, just to mention.

The year was 2006, on Friday the 13th of October when we got our very first Norwegian slasher, titled Fritt Vilt (with the international title Cold Prey). Yay! So this wasn’t just any slasher you see, it was a cultural event that would have its new chapter in Norwegian film history. Yes I know, it’s quite strange that the country that had the biggest export of black metal, church burnings and Satan didn’t have any horror films to showcase until after the millennium. What held us back while the wave of New French Extremity was already near its peak, is a good question.

We, of course, had Villmark (Dark Woods) from 2003, which leans more into the thriller section, and from there on we have to rewind way, waaaay back to the year 1958 (!) with De Dødes Tjern (Lake of the Dead), which has not aged particularly well. What was left was decades of a pretty stiff, wooden and a ridiculously conservative film industry which had not much to offer other than sloggish, forgettable and painfully dry obscure drama films made for god knows who. Yawn. There were some very few exceptions much thanks to Ivo Caprino (RIP). So aside from that, a film like Cold Prey was a big fresh air in my tiny gnome country. A game changer and a complete shift on how films in Norway would be made from here on, which also included other genres.

With the success and the cultural impact of Cold Prey, it also opened the door to several young genre filmmakers to show their muscles, most notably Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) and André Øvredal (Troll Hunter). Roar Uthaug, along with the two mentioned, would also eventually work in Hollywood with various outcomes. But it’s also valid to say that we have our fair share of terrible, shitty horror movies and the last ten years hasn’t been much to be excited about. So I’m not being a blind patriot waving my flag here. There’s also several Norwegian horror movies that seem to be impossible to find anywhere due to lack of release and distribution, so for all I know there could be a hidden gem somewhere. The only titles I’ve seen which are worth watching from recently are Project Z and The Innocents, both from 2021. And soon Norway will give birth to its first sea monster flick called Kraken, which will start filming in the Norwegian coast later this year. So we’ll see how that one turns out.

Cold Prey follows a group of youngsters who are going snowboarding in the mountains of Jotunheimen. The sky is blue, the air is crisp with even some sprinkles of love, and life is good… until one of the poor bastards fall and breaks his ankle. Luckily, they find an abandoned hotel nearby where they take shelter. And nothing bad happens here. After spending the night, they get met by a rescue team and The End. I’m joking, of course. You know that they’re in deep shit when one of the in-love couple checks into one of the rooms that have the numbers 2 3 7. Redrum!

It’s not the biggest surprise that they’re not alone in the hotel. How boring would that be. We already learn in the opening sequence that the place has a dark history where a kid once disappeared under some questionable circumstances. Our group of friends also learn that a mysterious person called the Mountain Man lives like a hermit somewhere in the dark corners of the hotel, and kills anyone who has the nerve to trespass.

If the premise sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. On paper, Cold Prey is as formulaic as it can be, which basically follows the same footsteps of the most generic slasher films you’ve seen hundreds of already. There’s nothing much new on the surface here, nor was it back in 2006, and the film’s biggest sin is that it’s pretty tame with lackluster kills. The brutality from the early films of Alexandre Aja and other extreme Frenchmen are worlds apart, just to make that clear. Us slow Norwegians still have a lot to learn in the splatter and gore department, unfortunately.

And I almost forgot to mention that there’s no cringe sex scene here, so kudos for at least breaking that cliché.

That being said, there’s more to enjoy here. The setting itself gives the movie an eerie, grim vibe and the acting is solid. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal stands out as the heroine who can also handle a shotgun. The story is intriguing enough with a pacing that keeps the entertaining value on track. The film also looks fabulous, where the bleak coldness really spices up the claustrophobic tension and atmosphere. Cold Prey was filmed at Leirvassbu, a tourist cabin in Jotunheimen where the actors lived during the filming. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the isolated and stone-cold surroundings messed a little with their heads.

So overall, despite not being more ballsy with the violence, Cold Prey is an entertaining watch with some unique scenery, great suspense and a fine addition to winter horror. Still, I must be honest enough to say that it would work more as a horror film for beginners. This is also the directorial debut of Roar Uthaug, who in 2018 made Tomb Raider. If you want more of the primitive Norwegian landscape, check out Escape (2012), also directed by Uthaug.

The film got two sequels: Cold Prey II, which is more of a Halloween II (1981) ripoff, and I don’t remember much of Cold Prey III other than it was a prequel. The first two is on DVD from Anchor Bay and Shout Factory. Kos dåkk!

Director: Roar Uthaug
Writers: Thomas Moldestad, Martin Sundland, Roar Uthaug
Original title: Fritt Vilt
Country & year: Norway, 2006
Actors: Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Rolf Kristian Larsen, Tomas Alf Larsen, Endre Martin Midtstigen, Viktoria Winge, Rune Melby, Erik Skjeggedal, Tonie Lunde, Hallvard Holmen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808276/