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.

This is when they learn of a legend surrounding the cabin. According to the story, years ago, a man became jealous of his sister and her lover and killed them both. Following this, he drowned himself in the nearby lake. According to the legend, anyone who stays in the house for any length of time will be overcome by a desire to follow suit and kill themselves by drowning. When the group searches for Bjørn, they find traces of him around the lake as well as the body of his dog. Naturally, this puts Liljan in a state, and it’s not terribly surprising when she is seen wandering to the lake in a somnambulant haze.

What’s going to follow this is, honestly, a great deal of academic conversation about what might be happening. We learn that Liljan and Bjørn are not merely siblings, but twins. We’re also going to learn that in the world of Lake of the Dead, telepathy and other psychic phenomena are the real thing. Siblings, and twins in particular, have a psychic bond that connects them to each other. We get the first hint of this when she tells a story about a time that she had a premonition of Bjørn being hurt and he was. Now, she’s convinced that he might well be at the bottom of the lake.

And, because we need something dead at the Lake of the Dead, Harald is eventually going to wander off and drown. This brings up an interesting parallel with the original legend—a man kills both his sister (and Liljan did go for an impromptu swim) and her husband (and Harald is Liljan’s fiance) before disappearing, and there has been some evidence of a visitor of some kind showing up in the house. Eventually, we’re going to get the rather unpleasant news that Bjørn might be more attached to his sister than we’re comfortable hearing about, as discussed in the journal he has left at the house—the thing that he loves and “can’t possess” can’t be possessed by any man.

This takes us to essentially the concluding scenes of the film, and for what it’s worth, we’re going to get an ending that plays like a Norwegian version of Scooby-Doo, if psychic abilities existed in the Scooby-Doo-niverse. We’ll get a wrap-up on everything that happened, kind of, and while the final package might not have a bow on it, it has enough wrapping paper to feel like we’re done.

So is Lake of the Dead a good movie? I suppose it is, but it feels like a kind of pedestrian one. This is a movie that desperately wants to be scary, but spends so much time trying to explain to the audience why they should be scared of what is going to happen that it never gets there. It’s fine if you want a very cerebral tale that is kind of like a ghost story but isn’t quite one.

It’s worth noting that this is considered one of Norway’s greatest-ever films. It’s also worth noting that the scene where Liljan attempts to drown herself is considered the cinematic height of Norwegian cinema. I mean, it’s a fine scene, but greatest ever?

Why to watch Lake of the Dead: You don’t get a lot of horror (or movies!) from Norway.
Why not to watch: All the characters seem a lot more interested in the academic aspects of what is happening rather than dealing with an existential threat.