Scooby-Dooby-Don't

Film: Lake of the Dead (De dødes tjern)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on various players.

When I think about horror movies, there are parts of the world that I don’t really consider that much. Scandanavia is one of those places, and I’m not sure why that is. I’m happy to think of British and French horror, German and Spanish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Mexican, and more, but Scandanavia rarely comes to mind, even with films like Midsommar. Lake of the Dead (or De dødes tjern in the original Norwegian) is very much an example of folk horror, using a remote cabin and a legend to create a sense of dread in the audience and the characters.

The film takes place in 1958, the present day for the characters involved. Author Bernhard Borge (Henki Kolstad) and his wife Sonja (Bjørg Engh) take a trip with four friends from Oslo. Those friends include psychoanalyst Kai (Erling Lindahl), editor Gabriel (André Bjerke), lawyer Harald (Georg Richter), and Harald’s fiancée Liljan (Henny Moan). The purpose of the trip is to visit Liljan’s brother Bjørn (Per Lillo Stenberg) at a cabin deep in the forest. When they arrive at the cabin, Bjørn is nowhere to be found.

What I've Caught Up With, October 2024 Part 2

I didn’t complete a lot of television shows entirely in October. I opted for a horror theme in shows (naturally) and after finishing All of Us are Dead at the end of September, I went with Deadboy Detectives, and have now transitioned into finishing the first season of NOS4A2, which is good so far. Other than that, I finished the latest seasons of The Bear and The Boys. In November, I expect to finish NOS4A2, and probably Boston Legal, The Good Place, and Schitt’s Creek, but we’ll see.

What I've Caught Up With, October 2024 Part 1

The rule with these posts is that I want to make sure that every movie I review is searchable. Blogger limits the labels on a specific post to 200 characters including spaces. I didn't knock out a ton of movies in October, but some had longer names, and the total character number was just over the 200 limit, forcing me to split this into two posts. The last two weeks of October were rough, and a lot of my movie watching was rewatches, just as background noise. So, here's hoping that November will pick up again.

Ten Days of Terror!: Horror Shorts

Film: The Call of Cthulhu; Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968); Outer Space
Format: Internet video on laptop.

People who read horror either love H.P. Lovecraft’s work or they hate it. I don’t know that there’s a lot of middle ground. One of the problems with Lovecraft’s writing is that, like Ray Bradbury’s writing, it doesn’t always translate well to film. In Bradbury’s case, it’s dialogue—no one actually speaks like Bradbury characters do. With Lovecraft, it’s the fact that his creepy crawlies and monsters defy description. This hasn’t prevented people from trying to film Lovecraft stories, but most of them don’t live up to the promise. The creature at the end of the original Hellboy is probably the closest we’ve seen to a true Lovecraftian horror on film. His story “The Call of Cthulhu” was thought to be unfilmable, but about 20 years ago, a group of independent filmmakers created The Call of Cthulhu as a traditional silent film…and it works.

Like a lot of Lovecraft (and Poe before him), the story is told in flashback, by a narrator who is relating his story to someone, trying to explain exactly what happened. In this case, a man (Matt Foyer) inherits the work of his great-uncle, who was obsessed with a religious cult called the Cthulhu Cult. The nephew pours through the work and becomes similarly obsessed himself. The fact that everyone who encounters or deals with the cult in some way seems to end up dead does not dissuade him. Encounters with the cult itself eventually leads the man to searching for the source of the cult, which leads him to the fabled city of R’lyeh, where great Cthulhu lies sleeping.

Ten Days of Terror!: Final Destination 5

Film: Final Destination 5
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

There is rumored to be a Final Destination 6 in the works, but until that happens, Final Destination 5 is the end of the series, and it means that I can put this series behind me, at least for now. Final Destination 5 seems like the end of the series that we deserve, though, or at least one that ties things up, regardless of whether or not it starts up again. On my end, I’m happy just to be done with it, even if that’s temporary.

By this time you know the setup. There’s going to be an inciting accident of which someone will have a terrible premonition. They will freak out, a group of people will follow them off whatever they are on or out of whatever they are in, and the accident will happen as foreseen. Death, having had his victims taken away, will then stalk the survivors and kill them via Rube Goldberg contraption in the order they were supposed to die. Eventually, our main character, the person who had the original premonition will figure out what is happening and will do some research on how they might survive what is happening, but Death will always win out in the end. The real question is always simply how the next person is going to die, since a) we know they will, and b) we know the order it’s going to happen.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Final Destination

Film: The Final Destination (Final Destination 4)
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on basement television.

You do this long enough, you learn a few lessons. I watched We Need to Talk About Kevin some time ago and never want to see it again, but I didn’t bother to write it up. Now it’s on the They Shoot Zombies list, so I’m going to have to watch it again. What does that have to do with The Final Destination, a.k.a. Final Destination 4? It’s the only film in the Final Destination series that isn’t on the list. I’m reviewing it in self-defense. I don’t think it’s ever going to show up, but I sure as hell don’t want to sit through it again. This is entirely proactive.

The Final Destination is the low point in the series. There’s a reason it hasn’t shown up on the They Shoot Zombies list. While most of them have a sub-3.0 rating on Letterboxd, this one is the lowest by nearly a full point. There are reasons for this. In addition to me not wanting to have to watch this again, I’m hoping to prevent you from wasting the 82 minutes it takes to get through this one.

Ten Days of Terror!: Final Destination 3

Film: Final Destination 3
Format: DVD from Freeport Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

I like the conceit of the Final Destination movies. The idea that a couple of people have cheated death then become targets of Death in the literal sense and wind up dying in a series of Rube Goldberg-style accidents is a fantastic hook for a film. The problem with the series is that it reached its highpoint in the open scenes of Final Destination 2. Not a single person I know who has seen that movie will willingly drive behind a log truck. What that means for the rest of the films in the series is that the car crash sequence is always hanging over the films. Final Destination 3 tries desperately to match this and can’t.

The way the films work is that the opening sequence sets up the idea that someone has a terrible premonition of an accident, freaks out, and leaves the situation along with a few other people. Then the accident happens exactly like the premonition suggested it would. The people who managed to avoid their terrible fate in the freak accident are then picked off one by one, essentially in the order they would have died in the premonition. Where the first film used a plane crash and the second used a massive highway accident, Final Destination 3 opts for a freak accident on a rollercoaster.