Let the Right One In (2008) - Horror Film Review

I saw Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In a long time ago originally, likely very soon after it came out. It has been over a decade at least, so with the film coming to digital platforms in the UK and Ireland, I felt it was time to revisit the cult classic. Directed by Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and written by John Ajvide Lindqvist, this slow burn coming of age vampire movie was nominated for a BAFTA, and had seventy six wins and fifty eight nominations in total worldwide.

It takes place entirely in a small Swedish town in winter, most of the scenes taking place at night or in the evening. Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is a twelve year old loner whose only attention at school is from the local bullies. One evening he meets a strange twelve year old girl named Eli (Lina Leandersson) who tells him that she recently moved into the next door apartment from his. With the hopes of finally having a friend, Oskar begins to spend more time with the girl despite her not really giving much information about who she is. Elsewhere, there is a series of murders in the small town, that unknown to Oskar is related to Eli. She is actually a vampire, with her ward getting too elderly to supply her with her regular blood supply (he being the one doing the killing), she has turned to Oskar, seeing something common with him due to both their social isolation, but not wanting him to share the same life long fate as her ward had.

This is nearly two hours in length but the time just flew by, despite me already remembering many of the story beats. I guess that shows how much the film had stuck in my mind, as I remembered key scenes from this, and even recalled how it ended, something I can't say I can do for many films. This is yet another example of a slow burn horror done right, and if you are after a peaceful film then this is a great example. There are screams every now and again, but for the most part this is a film that paces itself well, lots of scenes of not much noise, characters quietly speaking amongst themselves. The setting is perfect for the story being told, the snowy landscape adds a lot of atmosphere, and of course, red blood on white snow never fails to look good. Oskar was interesting as the bullied protagonist, having to put on the pretence of being happy while at home with his mother, keeping his unhappy existence a secret. Eli was also a great character, she doesn't talk much, but the increasing closeness between the two young teenagers felt natural, and I liked how there could be seen an ulterior motive for why Eli is getting close to the boy, something that is never implicitly brought up.

Being a vampire, Eli is shown able to climb sheer walls, have super strength, and an aversion to sunlight. There are plenty of scenes where she is attacking people, but this is always done in an understated way, or with the dramatic finale, mainly takes place away from the lingering shot from under a swimming pool. The violence never felt gratuitous, and was carefully considered, being used as and when the story required it. Blood effects look great here, the blood being the right colour and consistency to shine on camera. Special effects were also impressive, there was great make-up effects to show a character who had badly mutilated their face, a scene where a character bursts into flame, and an almost amusing scene when a character is attacked by multiple cats!

Rather than take the route of high action and high horror, this instead looks at the subject of a vampire from a more cursed perspective, with Eli doing what she needs to survive but not enjoying what she has to do, and Oskar finding an unlikely soulmate due to both being outcasts of a type. The story isn't deep, but it is effective, focussing more on the relationship between the two lead characters rather than a more extravagant story. I don't mind vampire films, and watching Let the Right One In, I was reminded of how good and different this particular one felt. Vertigo Releasing brought Let the Right One In to UK and Irish audiences across digital platforms on 20th January.

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Knocking (2021) - Horror Film Review

Knocking is a Swedish horror film that comes from director Frida Kempff. It's a film that deals with mental illness and follows this path right from the start. I'm always on the fence when it comes to films that could be considered 'slow burns', and Knocking certainly fits the criteria for such a film, but I found that the intriguing story, as well as a wonderful performance from the primary actress made for something fresh feeling.

Cecilia Milocco (The Circle) stars as Molly, a woman who at films start is leaving a psychiatric institute after having suffered some kind of mental breakdown. She moves into an apartment complex but right away things begin to go wrong for her. Molly becomes convinced she can hear a knocking sound coming from the apartment above, she confronts the tenant who lives there but he responds confused. Eventually she comes to think the knocking is some sort of morse code, and that there is a woman being held upstairs against her will. However, it seems she still has some problems as she displays clear signs of still suffering from mental illness, such as hallucinations both visual and audible. With her sanity beginning to unravel, is the knocking real, or another part of her damaged mind?

Knocking establishes early on to take what is being presented with a grain of salt. The film centres on Molly and it is her perspective we are being shown events from. It isn't long before it becomes clear she really is hallucinating events, such as a scene where she witnesses a woman in the apartment block opposite plunging to her death, yet when Molly races to the scene she is surprised to see no sign whatsoever that what she had seen actually took place. Milocco is fantastic in this central role, she gives a believable performance as a troubled woman and never exaggerates her characters troubles. The actress brings an uncomfortable realness to this character, she seems like someone at war with her own mind, but losing the battle. While she is alone for much of the film, it is when she is around other characters that you can see how unbalanced the character is, and that is down in part to the style of filming. One early scene that has her out shopping manages to create a claustrophobic and bewildering feel, creating a feel of anxiety from the shots used. A key scene around the end of the second act has the actress wearing a body cam to give a dizzying perspective of her actions, this body cam mainly has the view of her face, but also included a bit showing the back of her head.

Documenting the Witch Path (2017) - Horror Documentary Review

I first heard of the horror documentary Documenting the Witch Path back in 2019 and thought it sounded pretty cool. Originally I planned to watch this for review towards the end of last year, but with the pandemic nothing is certain and so it was a couple of months back that the director, Carl Sundström contacted me to let me know the entire documentary was now out to watch on YouTube for free. I have read complaints about how low on thrills this film is, but this is down to the apparent realism. This is a found footage combined with a real documentary apparent and so there are no conveniently placed sights or sounds caught on camera.

Carl Sundström and his two friends, Robin Franzén and Nathaniel P. Erlandsson are indie filmmakers from Sweden. Their latest project is to see them head to a lake in the county of Vasternorrland known locally as 'Witch Lake'. The legend goes that in the 17th Century over 300 women were executed in Sweden, accused of being witches. As well as being burnt alive many of these victims were also had to endure a 'Witch Trial' which involved their limbs being bound and then being thrown in a lake to drown. It isn't long into the friends research that they learn the lake they had planned to travel to wasn't in fact the real Witch Lake. A representative of the nearby town states the real lake had been sealed off from the public but refuses to state the reasons why. An internet search confirms these details, and it's made all the more mysterious by the fact that a lot of money was invested in making the place into a tourist attraction until it was suddenly all closed down. Intrigued by all this and thinking there could be a story in it Sundström decides to find this hidden lake and document his findings.

I spent a good deal of this wondering if any of what was happening really was real or not. Finally I began to think there was a  half truth to what was going on. The lack of anything really happening here led me to suspect this was at least partly real. Moments such as 'Blair Witch' style carefully placed stones and totems felt like something right out of a found footage movie, but that is almost as far as the horror extends to. Without going into any kind of spoilers there are elements of this that really are real, though the true aim of the documentary is far different to what it appears on the surface. Another element of realism is the frequent interviews with the cast after the fact, there is no effort to pretend that they didn't survive, instead this part creates expectation of something actually occurring on the creepy banks of Witch Lake.

Blood Paradise (2018) - Horror Film Review

I do like it when films I cover in my monthly news round-up later on down the line get offered up for review. Such is the case with Swedish horror comedy Blood Paradise which I first wrote about back in November of last year. This was directed by Patrick von Barkenberg who also appears in a secondary role here, and it was written by both him and Andrea Winter (who stars in this).

After acclaimed best-selling crime writer Robin Richards's (Winter) latest book flops her publicist sends her away to the Swedish countryside hoping it will inspire her back to greatness. The location chosen for her is a dilapidated property on a farm that is owned by a creepy farmer. She soon finds that everyone around her in her new surroundings have their own oddities, from her driver Hans Bubi (Christer Cavallius) who turns out to be an obsessive fan, to the farmer's sinister sister and son, something really isn't right with the place and Robin starts to see the whole trip as a bad idea.

I really wanted to love Blood Paradise and at times it came so close to me feeling that way. However there are moments here that led to frustration with how the story was playing out and being told, though some of those might not even be the fault of the film at all. There is a mild slasher vibe going on, with it made clear not that long in that there is a killer on the loose. I liked how it wasn't immediately obvious who this killer was, and with every character Robin meets weird in their own way it was easy to believe it could have been any one of them. This straddles the line between being a comedy and a horror though which sometimes leads to a surreal mish-mash of the two genres that gave me a feeling of The League of Gentlemen. For the most part this is an English language film, but there are moments when characters speak exclusively in Swedish with no subtitles present. I feel a bit wary about mentioning those parts as I'm not sure if it was just the screener I was provided with that had no subtitles, or if it was the intention of the director to keep these few scenes subtitle free. This mainly came into play with a subplot involving Bubi and his psychotic plant obsessed wife. Despite not being able to understand what they were saying to each other I still felt it was easy enough to get the gist of it. This language barrier works later on when Robin is encountered with a character speaking in Swedish to her, it allows the viewer to identify more with the alienation she is feeling.

Die Zombiejäger (2005) - Zombie Horror Film Review

Die Zombiejäger is a Swedish zombie film directed and co-written by Jonas Wolcher (Cannibal Fog). It very much reminded me of the low budget zombie films of the 1990's as it doesn't attempt to tell much of a story, has zombie makeup that goes all over the place in terms of quality, and has heavy rock music play whenever the fighting begins. Loving films about the undead as much as I do I can get on board with this type of messy film making, one of the things I often say with regards to zombie movies is that they fall into one of the genres when more often than not bad makeup actually benefits the picture, quantity over quality I think and here you have quite a few of the undead.

The plot for this is really quite simple, basically there has been a zombie outbreak in Gothenburg. The affected area has been contained and the government have hired three German mercenaries to come in and clear up the mess, so Heinrich, Dieter and Ivo arrive on scene to kill some zombies and along the way uncover a plot that may be far more outreaching than what first appears.

This is a very old school indie zombie flick in that outside of people battling the undead in a variety of cool ways there is not much going on. There are a couple of sub plots but they are mostly inconsequential with it all just being an excuse to battle lots of zombies. Most the film focuses on the three German mercenaries and they have many many fight scenes which usually follow the format of a shot of them firing their weapons and then the camera showing the effect the attack has on the relevant zombie. There are not many parts of the fighting that deviates from this particular style of film making and so there can be a bit of a loss in motion. However I never got bored of these fight scenes, there is a grindhouse/B-movie vibe with the desaturated look making everything seem slightly unreal. I never got bored of the low angle shots of the zombies with the sky usually attractively positioned behind them. There are plenty of guns used, as well as throwing stars and a stick. It was nice to see the CGI was limited, certainly never a moment where I felt things looked digitally fake with most the effects seeming to be practical ones. There are lots of moments of zombies eating random bits of flesh, even eating from their own wounds they have had inflicted.

Flower of Death (2015) - Short Horror Film Review

Flower of Death (or Fiore di Ferro to give it it's native title) is a short Swedish giallo film that was directed by Viking Almquist who previously directed the bizarre Evil Easter 3: The Final Easter (2013). Whenever I speak of giallo I must Google it to remind myself of what exactly it is, to me it is something that features a female in peril, being stalked by an unseen killer who is usually disguised, and is often wearing leather gloves. A quick search says it is a "Italian genre of literature and film, usually with mystery elements and often with slasher, supernatural horror or crime fiction elements".

On her way home from a night of drinking with her best friend a woman witnesses a masked figure hunched over a prone body in the street. The woman runs home, dropping her phone in the process and so unable to call the police she falls asleep. The next day she decides to walk to the police station to report what she saw, but it seems the masked killer knows where she lives and is stalking her...

Faces of Snuff (2016) - Horror Film Review

My goodness, after a literal never ending two hours and fifteen minutes watched over three days I have finally managed to get to the end of Faces of Snuff; an anthology film made up of a crazy amount of snuff films. Snuff films are real life videos that show people being killed on camera, this movie of course features no actual deaths but instead an unending amount of pretend ones which work to various degrees but are all just so pointless.

I try to go into films with no knowledge of what they are about so initially I didn't even realise this was an anthology. Contained within must be at least fifty short films, many not lasting more than a few minutes, a lot without sound and many designed to look like they were filmed on Super 8 or handheld camera. Most of these have utterly no plot to them and most of these feature women being tortured, killed and sexually abused. Now before I go on to the review proper I am going to have a shower to symbolically wash away some of the filth I have witnessed...

Bunny the Killer Thing (2015) - Comedy Horror Film Review

Back in December of last year I did a small news post about the release of Finnish comedy horror Bunny the Killer Thing (directed and co-written by Joonas Makkonen), it didn't seem my thing as it seemed to revolve around sex jokes which I usually don't appreciate. However having watched Bunny the Killer Thing for review I have to say it was frankly hilarious from start to finish (or should that be 'start to Finnish'?), something I was not expecting.

During the prologue a man finds himself kidnapped and at the mercy of a mad scientist. The scientist injects him with a strange serum that starts a mutation within his body, with new found super strength he breaks free from his bindings, knocks out the kidnappers and flees into the nearby woods where he further transforms. Meanwhile a group of friends are journeying out to a cabin in woodland for a weekend of partying, on the way they pick up three shady British guys whose car has broken down. The partying starts in earnest but the festivities are interrupted by the kidnapped man who has now mutated fully into a six foot tall rabbit-man armed with an enormous and deadly member, and thirsty for female copulation...

Cannibal Fog (2014) - Horror Comedy Film Review

Cannibal Fog is a Swedish horror that the makers have described as 'a meta drama comedy with art house influences in the urban cannibal genre'. Before I start the review proper I have to state for the record that stuff was occurring in my personal life that may have made me less receptive than usual in my pursuit and acceptance of all types of horror.

Michael (Linus Karlgren) is a young man who has wasted his life in the pursuit of porn and meaningless sex. A chance encounter with contaminated food at a local cafe sets him upon a search for the addictive new taste. Meanwhile middle aged man Albin (Malte Aronsson) who resides in the same city as Michael is a secret cannibal serial killer who serves his 'special' meat dishes up as meals for food connoisseurs. Eventually the paths of Michael and Albin meet and fate plays out.

I watched this film in two sittings and at nearly two hours long I had to do it this way as I just could not get engaged with it due to the bizarre humour and the art house stylings it plays with. Much of the film follows Michael; a greasy haired loser, whose family have all but given up on him. His obsession with sex mirrors Albin's obsession with food providing a grim parallel between the two. The problem with the Michael segments is that not much really happens, The one plot hook is that he keeps waking up with flesh from his leg removed; just who is cutting away his flesh as he sleeps? Albin on the other hand has far shorter screen time but his segments are actually not that bad. One scene in which the pretentiousness of food critics is played up was actually pretty funny truth be told.

The soundtrack is pretty awful with lots of shouty rock and middle of the road forgettable background Muzak that sounds like it would be at home in an elevator. The film is in its native language with English subtitles and while occasionally the dialogue shines for the most part it is nothing special. Acting is hard to tell but it seems to be at least competent and I was delighted to see the man of many roles; Kim Sonderholm in a bit part. I have said it before and I will say it again, that man just gets everywhere!

Cannibal Fog starts strong showing as it does a scene from the end of the film to leave you wondering how things get to that stage, and in general the last quarter of the film is pretty darn good. With the introduction of a secret cannibal society and a mad finale that was exciting and fun to watch it really picked up, but by then it was too little too late. I loved the relationship between Michael and Albin but it comes so late into the film that it just seems a wasted opportunity.

There are some great ideas here, the explanation of the films title Cannibal Fog was unexpected and leads to some great moments but when so much of the film follows a disgusting unlikeable character again it is far too late to make up for what comes before. Dealing as it does with flesh eaters there is plenty of human meat being prepared which turned my stomach a bit, not really into the cannibal genre it turns out! It is easy to see the contrast between pleasures of the flesh and pleasures of eating the flesh, as well as humans obsession with food types and the preparation of it.

If your after mild art house and a strange time then Cannibal Fog might be right up your alley, for me though I just could not get into it until far too late when it had all but wrapped up.

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