Behind the Couch

2008 Dir. Mats Stenberg Having survived the massacre that claimed the lives of her friends in an abandoned hotel at the hands of a psychotic, feral killer, Jannicke (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) finds that her nightmare is far from over. Taken to a rural hospital to be treated for shock, she realises that the body of the monstrous brute she thought she’d killed has been recovered along with those of her friends’ and brought to the hospital where she’s staying. On closer inspection, the doctors discover the killer is not dead at all, and before the night is over Jannicke finds herself fighting to stay alive in the midst of another bloodbath… Cold Prey II is one of those rare specimens – a genuinely great slasher sequel. It maintains the momentum of the first instalment , picking up directly where it left off (the first of many nods to Halloween II ), adds to the story and doesn’t just recycle itself in the manner of so many slasher sequels. Viewers will reap a much more rewarding exper...

2006 Dir. Roar Uthaug AKA Fritt Vilt A group of friends on a snowboarding excursion in deepest, darkest Jotunheimen are forced to seek refuge in a seemingly abandoned hotel in when one of them breaks their leg. While exploring the building they discover that the hotel was shut down in the Seventies after a series of mysterious disappearances, including that of the owner’s young son. It soon becomes apparent to the group that they are not alone in the hotel; a mysterious psychopath begins to pick them off, one, by one, by one… While the premise of this expertly crafted and smartly scripted Norwegian slasher flick seems to creak under the weight of its own cliché-ridden conventions, the execution of Cold Prey/Fritt Vilt , is what is most surprising and unconventional and sets this film well apart from its myriad contemporaries. We open in typical slasher style, with the apparent death of a young boy at the hands of an unseen assailant in the midst of a blizzard. Skip forward tw...

2009 Dir. Tommy Wirkola AKA Død Snø A group of medical students on a skiing holiday in deepest, darkest Norway come face to face with marauding zombie Nazis… Yes. Zombie Nazis. Dead Snow is every bit as preposterous as it sounds. In a similar vein to Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland , Wirkola’s striking looking film is an outrageous comedy-horror that deftly mixes chills with chuckles and gore with guffaws. The film sets its tone in the opening scene as a young woman flees in terror across a desolate snowscape accompanied by the strains of Dukas’s mischievous symphony The Sorcerer’s Apprentice . Director Wirkola wisely keeps her pursuers to the shadows and we only catch the briefest glimpses of them before they set upon the unfortunate woman and tear her asunder. The film’s cine-literate characters are an amiable bunch and the script (by Wirkola and Stig Frode Henriksen) takes time to establish group dynamics and ease us into the company of the group before all hell break...