Popcorn Kernels: Q4 2016 Review Purge, Vol. 2

It’s time to clear out more cobwebs from the ol’ backlog of 2016, to create a clean slate ready for Oscar season! So here are some reviews of flicks I watched in December 2016 that weren’t quite so vital to write about in full.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Year: 2010
Director: Jalmari Helander
Cast: Jorma Tommila, Peeter Jakobi, Onni Tommila
Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

In a secluded Finish mountain village, a young boy must stop the evil original Santa Claus from being unleashed upon his friends by a nearby mountaintop dig.

I love me some Christmas horror. There’s something about subverting all the manufactured Hallmark cheeriness of the season that appeals to me, and it helps that I genuinely love the holiday itself. But I genuinely wasn’t prepared for Rare Exports, a Finnish Christmas fairy tale with an unusually somber tone. It’s a stab at Guillermo del Toro-esque weight and spectacle that doesn’t seem fitting of the down-and-dirty genre that brought us Jack Frost and Santa’s Slay.

That tone is what allows it to stand out from the crowd, as well as its focus on a type of rural mountain community not normally seen in Hollywood cinema. The realism with which it presents the struggles of the townsfolk, which are getting tougher around Christmastime even without the invasion of a killer Santa, is outstanding. But the unfortunate fact is that these things are exactly what prevent it from being a particularly great Christmas horror film. The intent is spectacular, but the execution is rather lackluster, holding off on horror for a pretty dull 45 minutes of setup and throttling the film’s chances for entertainment with an overserious tone.

Fortunately, when the horror does kick in, it centers on a truly uncanny image that overcomes the abrasive protagonists (who accidentally trap what they believe to be an employee of the dig site and almost instantly decide to prod him with sticks and hold him hostage – delightful!), the jumps in logic, and the rather silly denouement. That image is of a silent, naked old man who crouches in the shadows, unmoving. It’s a sight that chills the spine enough that it doesn’t thaw until the credits roll.

And, to be fair, the silly finale is a tremendous bit of fun that leads to a charming concluding punchline. It just doesn’t necessarily feel like a natural extension of the almost neorealist goings-on that propel the first half of the movie. Visually speaking, Rare Exports is well made (especially a wonderful bit of business with the recurring image of an advent calendar), and the actors are decent, but the tone and the pacing are just a little too wonky to wholeheartedly recommend.

Rare Exports won’t be entering my Christmas season rotation, but it’s at least an interesting curio that I don’t regret watching. It’s a slice of sub-del Toro fairy tale fruitcake with an uncanny confidence in its own construction.

Rating: 6/10

The Color Purple

Year: 1985
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey
Run Time: 2 hours 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

In the South in the early 1900’s, Celie is married off to an abusive husband and relies on the strength of the women in her life to survive.

You couldn’t pay me to even pretend I care more about Steven Spielberg’s serious movies. I’m a Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones kind of guy. I’ve never seen Lincoln or Schindler’s List and I’m happy to let it remain that way. However, attached as I am to a certain drama-loving individual, recently I was given the choice to sit through The Color Purple or face a life of loneliness and regret. I chose the former, and thus was I introduced to Spielberg’s very first foray into the world of prestige drama.

And while the length of this film is indefensible (I could cut at least half an hour without batting an eye), spending time with these characters really did help th efilm grow on me. It doesn’t hurt that this is still a Spielberg movie, so as miserable as the characters’ lives frequently are, it never descends into the ultragrim territory of, say, Precious. And damn, is he a fun director.

The Color Purple might be maudlin as all hell, especially in its third act (a joyful reunion is pockmarked by a woman wearing an enormous flowing cape, for crying out loud), but visually speaking the man knows exactly what he’s doing. Whether it be the way he uses silhouette to portray Celie’s journey and self-identity, the recurring motif that links the sky with freedom, or the decision to stage its grandest scene of female empowerment around a dinner table, it’s clear that a great deal of thought, skill, and care went into this production.

Plus, the story (based on the Alice Walker novel of the same name) is a delicate and earnest tale about women that is still one of the more powerful narratives about female connection and empowerment out there. Although most of the people Celie meets throughout her life start out as enemies or rivals, they slowly realize they share a bond of sisterhood that can never be taken away from them or defined by the male (and white)-dominated society they’re trapped in. It’s wonderful stuff, despite some of Spielberg’s more cartoonish additions (a bar fight scene with Oprah looks like it was lifted straight out of Looney Tunes). Whoopi Goldberg gives an indelible debut performance, giving you intimate access to Celie’s thoughts and feeling using just her marvelously expressive face, the story is uplifting but doesn’t shy away from cold reality, and it’s good enough to forgive that grotesquely bloated run time. If that’s not a mark of true quality, I don’t know what is.

Rating: 7/10

Headhunters

Year: 2011
Director: Morten Tyldum
Cast: Aksel Hennie, Synnøve Macody Lund, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An art thief/corporate recruiter must escape from an implacable assassin.

I should probably expand my scope a little before I make this assertion, but as far as I can tell, I love Norwegian movies. From films like Cold Prey or Dead Snow, it seems like the entire country has been gobbling up American genre films for decades until deciding in a snap that they can make some themselves. And they’re better. I can now expand this theory from sci-fi/horror to the action/thriller genre as well. Passengers director Morten Tyldum’s adaption of Jo Nesbø’s best-selling novel Headhunters is – put simply – a high-octane treat.

Although it’s a simple, snappy little crime thriller, it benefits from its European flavor. First of all, the lead isn’t preposterously handsome and debonair. He’s a regular Joe (or Jo) who just happens to be very good at stealing art. His lack of perfection makes his predicament seem that much more dangerous, because you’re not so certain that he can Jason Statham his way out of trouble. Plus, there’s a certain blasé attitude toward nudity and violence that makes the whole thing feel more visceral and human. While the filmmaking itself is very polished, the people and circumstances are not, giving it an edge that it wields like a razor-sharp blade.

I can’t say that I have much in particular to write about Headhunters, because it’s an elemental – almost primal – narrative, except to say that it’s a well-oiled machine. Every genre element is in the perfect position to keep your heart pumping along to its electric rhythm. It’s an exciting, harrowing, twisty, frequently gross tale of the lengths one man will go for survival. It has a James Bondian attitude toward women, which is always unfortunate, but it is what it is. And what it is is very captivating.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1298

Undead Again

On that fateful day in May 2012, Cassidy and I sat down to watch this Spanish movie called [REC]. We were both profoundly affected by the experience and that summer we pretty much exclusively watched zombie films, trying to sate our desires for more bloody mayhem.

We tore through Land of the Dead, Zombie Diaries, [REC] 2 and countless others, both good (Dead Snow) and bad (Zombie Diaries 2: World of the Dead). Despite our voracious appetites, we barely skimmed the surface of the fertile fields of zombie cinema and when second semester ended, we set out to plow through even more.

Summer of the Living Dead: 2013

Dawn of the Dead

Year: 1978
Director: George A. Romero
Cast: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reiniger
Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA Rating: X

A group of zombie outbreak survivors holes up in a Pennsylvania Mall.

We waited a long time for this one, having unsuccessfully tried to watch it in late August and again in October. So naturally we opted to open our summer with Dawn of the Dead - only the most critically acclaimed zombie film of all time, at the top of every list and carrying a solid 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. We excitedly popped in the DVD and found it... underwhelming.

Now, I can definitely see why this movie made a splash in the 70's. Tom Savini's gore effects (which later landed him on a little slasher film called Friday the 13th) are decades ahead of their time and the score by Dario Argento's frequent collaborators, the band Goblin, is delightfully weird and off-putting (I thought it worked, but Cassidy found it hilarious).

The satire of American consumerism provides a level of depth uncommon to most undead pictures (and let's face it, the lauded anti-racist undertones of Night of the Living Dead are mostly accidental). It is a good, well-made film in terms of the art of cinema but it features a slate of thoroughly unlikable characters (especially its pregnant heroine) and does not do quite enough to earn its punishing run time. These factors don't totally diminish the film's historical power, but in today's world where we have access to hundreds of other movies like this one, I'd much rather shoot for a film that's less well-made but more fun.

Rating: 7/10


Re-Animator

Year: 1985

Director: Stuart Gordon

Cast: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

An ambitious medical student creates a serum that can bring the dead back to life.

About as related to H.P. Lovecraft as a McDonald's hamburger, Re-Animator is nevertheless a loose adaptation of his short story "Herbert West - Reanimator." It is a barrel of campy fun that critics have somehow mistaken for a good movie. Holding a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, this makes Re-Animator rated higher than Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, and The Texas Chain Saw Masssacre. There is no world that exists in any of our manifold alternate universes in which this is true.

Re-Animator is a bad movie. But it is so gleefully, irrepressibly bad that it's a blast to watch. Barbara Crampton (who's featured in my go-to movie of the summer, You're Next) gives a hilariously uneven performance in a hilariously uneven sweater opposite Bruce Abbott's "only hot in the 80's" heartthrob performance and Jeffrey Combs's hammy mad scientist deadpan.

Featuring my first experience with a post-coital Spring-Loaded Cat scare, a German physician named Hans Gruber (3 years before Die Hard, so let's not call it a rip-off), a secretly pretty great severed head performing cunninglingus, a man being strangled with a large intestine, and a doctor's office full of battered silver trophies, I have no doubt why this film became a cult classic.

Top it off with music cues that rip pages directly from Psycho's songbook and an evil doctor that looks exactly like John Kerry whose "acting voice" is so affected that he sounds like Siri, and you've got an A+ B movie on your hands. Gory, silly, and effortlessly cheesy, this is one to treasure.

Champion Dialogue: "He's got a secret folder filled with napkins and hair!"

Rating: 8/10

Diary of the Dead

Year: 2007

Director: George A. Romero

Cast: Michelle Morgan, Joshua Close, Shawn Roberts

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Film students capture an account of the zombie apocalypse on tape.

Ah, Diary of the Dead, the much maligned black sheep of Romero's Living Dead franchise. Being found footage, it didn't find a lot of friends in the horror community at large. However, it is frequently ignored that in the beginning, Diary solves a lot of problems of the shopworn found footage genre. It is made very clear that the footage is edited (by one of the characters, at that) and that she added in some music at crucial moments.

This is not cheating.

Many films like The Last Exorcism, The Zombie Diaries, and portions of the V/H/S anthologies have used multiple camera angles and background score without ever once addressing that the very presence of such things flies directly in the face of the nature of the genre. Romero took that flaw and made it a strength - at least in the relative authenticity of the film itself. Unfortunately this also creates a lot of problems that certainly would not and could not be present otherwise.

The editing is episodic, and after each episode we get a bit of pointless narration to accompany some pointless recapping of previous footage. This sucks, except for in the final moments of the film. If I wanted to listen to a deadpan film student pontificate about what makes us human ("It's us against them... Except... They are us), I'd have taken that summer course.

Also, being film students, most of the characters are supremely unlikable to the point where I actively wished for their throats to be chomped out by hordes of the undead. The main character, Deb (Morgan) has such an acidic personality that she treats even her boyfriend, whom she at least nominally loves like a piece of gum on the bottom of her shoe.

People wander off into the woods, open the doors to strange men, and generally behave like lobotomized toddlers, and I swear if the movie were only this, it would be a dreary mess.

But when it's good, it's good, babydoll.

To start, there's some fabulous gore here including a zombie child stuck to a wall with an arrow, a horde of zombie shot through a hole in another zombie's head, a man stabbing himself in the head with a scythe to get to a zombie who's biting his neck, and a zombie head dissolving in hydrochloric acid.

Huzzah! All we need is the red red krovvy and Romero delivers.

The very best parts of Diary of the Dead are often the weirdest, but that's probably because it is so divorced from any other zombie film or even any of the director's previous work. 

Here's my two absolute favorite parts of the film:

1) When a dude in a mummy costume is driven crazy alone in a house full of zombies. It is unexpectedly sweet and truly hilarious, like Stu Macher's scene at the end of the first Scream.

2) A deaf Amish guy (I know, right) throws a stick of dynamite at a horde of zombies (I know, right?) and then... this.

Precious.

And the obligatory social satire - this time of the tendency of our generation to mindlessly record events and post them online without considering their real impact - is solid. Honestly, I found this to be one of Romero's most well-developed satires thematically. Unlike some of his other movies, where it comes in fits and starts, it actually feels like a deeply considered thought process.

Champion Dialogue: "He's a state trooper."

"How do you know?"

"His hat is a stupid looking hat."

Rating: 8/10

Now, because Cassidy and I got distracted by unimportant things like work and major life events like Prom Night, we actually didn't get around to as much zombie mayhem as we were hoping. My final review is going to be of a classic, one that we watched ages ago but that I recently revisited with my friend Henri.

Dead Snow (Død Snø)

Year: 2009

Director: Tommy Wirkola

Cast: Vegar Hoel, Charlotte Frogner, Jeppe Beck Laursen

Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

A group of young med students decides to spend their break at a secluded cabin in the mountains, but unfortunately a clan of Nazi zombies has the same idea.

Norway, man. Those American-fed lunatics are at it again with a gory romp through the alpine heights, think Cold Prey but instead of the mountain man it's an army of undead Nazis. Due to Norway's seemingly intense fascination with slasher films, we get a fairly straightforward Meet the Meat section when we're introduced to our characters.

The characters are virtually indistinguishable, but as far as I can figure, there's Martin (Hoel), a med student who's scared of blood and thinks smothering his girlfriend with a pillow makes for a fun Saturday night; Hanna (Frogner), his dread-sporting girlfriend; Erlend (Laursen), a movie buff; Chris (Jenny Skavlan), Hanna's cousin who apparently thinks it's appropriate to bang dudes while they're sitting in an outhouse; Roy (Stig Frode Henriksen), the horniest man in Norway; Liv (Evy Kasseth Røsten), who is blonde and nothing else; Vegard (Lasse Valdal), the only reasonably attractive member of the group; and his girlfriend Sara (Ane Dahl Torp), who has the brilliant idea of skiing to the cabin alone. Needless to say, she doesn't make it.

The first act good-naturedly stabs at some meta humor with Erlend pointing out what a common trope a group of teens going to a cabin in the woods is. Unfortunately, the ensuing conversation about movies with that plot prove how very few there actually are. This is only a minor nitpick, but April Fool's Day? That's in a mansion on an island. Friday the 13th? A campground. Maybe their translations are off.

Anyway, it turns out when World War II ended, a squadron of Nazi officers was driven out of a nearby town, left to freeze to death in this very mountain range. And who should come a-knockin' but Colonel Herzog himself, looking for his long lost Nazi gold?

What the film might lack in technical prowess (the lighting is a little flat, some equipment can be spotted along the edge of a couple frames, and those zombies have some awfully healthy pink skin if you peek between the folds of their jackets), it more than makes up for in pure ambition as the second half picks up and transforms the peaceful cabin into a whirling dervish of bloody hilarity.

Heads are pulled in two, a man is separated from his limbs like a starfish, and Vegard hangs off a cliff, using a zombie's intestines as a rope. It's gross, it's fun, and it's a thrill ride that doesn't let up, all accompanied by typically bizarre Norwegian death metal.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1863

Keepin' It Cool

Year: 2008
Director: Mats Stenberg
Cast: Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Marthe Snorresdotter Rovik, Kim Wifladt
Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A

After watching the extremely underwhelming The Descent Part 2 (which I think I've bashed for three straight reviews now), I had somewhat low hopes for Cold Prey 2 (Fritt Vilt II), but our friends in Norway prove once again that they are not to be outdone and this scrappy sequel was a breath of (chilled) fresh air.

Cold Prey 2 is still immensely derivative of American slasher films (in fact, it's basically Halloween II in the mountains), but just like Cold Prey it provides a shot in the arm to the genre. Cinematically, the film is very steady on its feet, and some camera shots were so inspired or off-kilter that I had to pause the film and sit back to let their effects sink in fully. One in particular - a shot of a rescue worker's side mirror as he sees the bruised and beaten woman in the road behind him then opens the door and runs to her - is one of those "I wish I could have thought of that" moments that prove that cinema is much more than just pointing a camera at things and calling it a day.

The movie is full of moments like this, but simply listing them all would take the fun out of watching the film and reading this review.

And looking at this picture of dead Eirik.

Jannicke (Berdal), the sole* survivor of the bloodbath in the first movie, is taken to a sleepy mountain hospital to recover (and await investigation by the police - she's covered in somebody else's blood). The hospital has fallen on hard times and is about to close down, so there's only a skeleton crew (pun 100% intended) on hand to help out when the bodies of her friends (and a gargantuan mountain man with a bloody pickaxe wound) are recovered from the bottom of a massive crevasse in the glacier.

The hospital's backup crew will arrive Tomorrow Morning.

The police chief sends two of his officers off to investigate Jannicke's claims about the Hotel du Murder up on the slopes and leaves one officer behind to guard her room while he checks some files at the station.

The force is short staffed but their reserve forces will arrive Tomorrow Morning.

Can you guess what happens next?

Did you guess that the mountain man is not quite dead and returns to his pickaxin' ways? A+ for you.

What follows is an extremely satisfying, if not totally groundbreaking slasher flick, much in the vein of the original. Now, because the Cold Prey movies have a reputation for being rote slashers with surprisingly high quality and emotional resonance, this isn't all by a long shot.

The characters, while less fleshed out than Número Uno, still manage to capture our hearts. There's Camilla (Rovik), the scrappy and headstrong nurse who'd be our best bet for Final Girl if Jannicke wasn't still hanging around. There's Ole (Wifladt), her boyfriend who's upset that her new job is in the far-off town of Smkyxlqberg; Audhild (Johanna Mørck), the pleasant and dedicated blonde nurse; Daniel (Vetle Qvenild Werring), a little boy with a broken arm who befriends the skittish Jannicke; various policemen and a senile patient who has trouble finding the bathroom; and Sverre (Mats Eldøen), who has a crush on Audhild and unfortunately not me. 

He knows he looks cute in that baseball cap.

Cold Prey II manages to-

Hey! Don't interrupt m- OK, it's fine.

Like I was saying, Cold -

This is getting adorable. I mean annoying.

Prey 2 -

Awwww... Wait, what's that in the mirror? Sh!t.

manages to avoid most of the major flaws of being a slasher sequel. Apparently, when the Norwegians were hitting up American movies for ideas, they also took notes on their mistakes.

Remember the deplorable Mirror Scare used in every movie where the character bends down to spit in the sink/wash their face/pray to the faucet gods and when they look up, something is behind them in the mirror? Cold Prey 2 makes great use of mirrors (see the blurry screenshot above) without ever once resorting to such cheap thrills. Car mirrors, medicine cabinets, those mirrors used to see around corners - all are cleverly used to enhance the thrills of the film and it is a wondrous sight to see.

Which brings me seamlessly to my next point - that the aura of the first film is not violated but isn't ripped off. There's still plenty of heavy steel doors and narrow, ill-lit hallway action in this alpine hospital and even though we already know the main antagonist, there's still a slow burn so we can settle in with the old characters and meet the new before the horror begins in earnest.

And, like most sequels, this one concerns itself more with the backstory of the killer as a way to deepen the universe of the franchise. Somehow, this film hit the lucky balance with providing us enough backstory to keep us interested and crank up our fear of the villain (he's basically unkillable) without bogging us down with unnecessary mythology (for that, please see Cold Prey III, which was never supposed to happen).

Run! Run from the tidal wave of mythology overspill from the set of Paranormal Activity V!

Not that this film is perfect. My theory is that the cinematographer had an astigmatism, which is why he decided to keep the beginning of every important shot blurry for five seconds longer than it needed to be. And we are unfortunately not totally free from Stupid Horror Movie Character Decision Making when Jannicke fails to murder the heck out of the felled killer, leading to an admittedly cool but totally unnecessary climax at the snowy hotel.

All in all, this is a great followup to a great slasher film and I'm not complaining one bit.

TL;DR: Cold Prey 2 is a surprisingly solid return to form for the Norwegian slasher franchise.
Rating: 7/10
Should I Spend Money On This DVD? Actually, yeah. It's one of the best slasher sequels I've ever seen. And it's foreign so it has cachet.
Word Count: 1051
Reviews In This Series
Cold Prey / Fritt Vilt (Uthaug, 2006)
Cold Prey 2 / Fritt Vilt II (Stenberg, 2008)

Ice Scream

Year: 2006
Director: Roar Uthaug
Cast: Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Rolf Kristian Larsen, Tomas Alf Larsen
Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes
MPAA Rating: N/A

What is up with Norway, man? Since the beginning of history, the snowy land has had almost no significant presence in international pop culture but all of a sudden in the mid 2000's, they started producing absolutely stellar horror films out of nowhere. Dead Sno (Død Snø) is a terrific (Nazi) zombie film that got me into this neck of the woods and I have no intention of leaving anytime soon. Norwegian television must play old American horror films on a loop because this slasher films could compete with (and is better than most of) the big dogs.

Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt) is, when it comes right down to it, a fairly routine slasher movie. It doesn't try to put twists on the genre. It knows its place and its goal is to make us fall in love with the characters and enjoy the ride. I know watching characters you enjoy and identify with getting brutally murdered doesn't necessarily sound like a good time, but that's the key to horror. You need to care about the well being of these people or else you'll just end up rooting for the killer. 

Yes, it's fun to watch Jason eviscerate a cadre of douchebags, but he hasn't been scary since Round One. You relate to these people and that makes you fear for them. And that's where Cold Prey does the genre well.

 You care about them, even if they're dirty foreigners.

The movie begins and WHITE. As far as the eye can see. It seems that Norway has a lot of snow and director Roar Uthaug (who sounds like some sort of Bear King from a forgotten Disney film) utilizes this to his advantage, immediately oppressing the audience with a weighty mass of, well, nothing.

It is exactly this sort of nothing that our protagonists wander into, full steam ahead. It seems that Eirik (Tomas Alf Larsen) is somewhat of an adrenaline junkie (flashes of Descent here) and has taken his group of friends to go snowboarding in a remote mountain locale where no tourists will bother them. Or hear their cries for help.

In tow are his girlfriend Jannicke (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, who was also in the abysmal Chernobyl Diaries but I love her anyway), their friends Morten Tobias (Rolf Kristian Larsen) and Mikal (Endre Marten Midtstigen) along with his girlfriend Ingunn (Viktoria Winge). That was fun to type, let's never do that again.

Anyway, Jannicke is afraid of commiting further to Eirik because she doesn't want them to grow bored of each other. Ingunn is a hot blonde who is head over heels for her beau but worries he just wants her for sex. Morten does just fine on his own, but gazes longingly at Jannicke when nobody is looking. We are allowed to explore these relationships for a good 40 minutes, and while they aren't necessarily more than stock situations, they are rooted in very human characters and it's a pleasure to watch them interact.

When one of their party is badly injured in a snowboarding accident, they hole up in a nearby building which looks eerily similar to the Stage 3 Dream from Inception, but upon closer inspection turns out to be an empty hotel.

The five friends relax, drink, and apply emergency first aid. They make plans to send Eirik out for the car in the morning, but in the meantime they have this whole wonderful place to explore! Upon closer inspection, it turns out this hotel is more like a meat locker than an Embassy Suites. Long stainless steel hallways connect the rooms, lit by a row of flickering fluorescents. Wisely, most of them decide to sleep in the well-appointed lobby.

Mikal and Ingunn have a fight. Nobody wins. Mikal storms off. Ingunn and a mysterious masked mountain man have a fight. She loses. We all lose. The cleaning ladies who'll have to use some extra elbow grease to get the blood stains out of the floor lose.

Surprise, surprise, we're not alone!

The killer begins to hunt them down one by one and they all learn the many wonders that can be achieved with a sturdy pickaxe.

The real kicker - and the most unique element of the film in terms of slasher tropes - is that it doesn't matter how they die. There is no array of edged weapons or hyper-creative Rube Goldbergian kill sequences. If they come against that pickaxe they will die, and Cold Prey uses that knowledge to ramp up the tension and produce a truly scary slasher film, which is no mean feat.

Accompanied by some truly inspired set design, a company of likable characters, and some just plain hair-raising, goosebump-having moments, Cold Prey is certainly a success and the high stakes ending setpiece is the cherry on top of a really terrible night on bald mountain.

Body Count: 4, and as always the slashers with the lowest body count tend to be the most terrifying.
TL;DR: Cold Prey operates within slasher parameters to create a stellar film populated with characters anyone can invest in.
Rating: 8/10
Should I Spend Money On This DVD? I wish more people liked slashers so I could definitively say yes. But yes. Please?
Word Count: 898

Reviews In This Series
Cold Prey / Fritt Vilt (Uthaug, 2006)
Cold Prey 2 / Fritt Vilt II (Stenberg, 2008)