Norwegian horror COLD PREY was a nice surprise a few years back : nothing original or remarkable about its script, but its execution made for a genuinely tense and involving throwback slasher pic. This sequel duplicates its predecessor’s virtues : sometimes routine in its false scares and jolts and heavily indebted to HALLOWEEN II, it is nonetheless efficiently crafted, a significantly above average example of its type.
As with COLD PREY, the filmmaking and writing surpass the straight-forward, old-hat plotting. In addition to showcasing a genuinely frightening killer, the sequel – like the original – cannily avoids typical, obnoxious slasher movie characters (the people on-screen here are all appealing and credible) and emphasizes tension over creative gore murders. (Though the first kill, a bloody throat slash, is pretty startling, and a woman does get her head stoved in with a fire extinguisher – both of which shock by being the exception rather than the norm).
Another key asset separating this from the reams of other slasher movies, American or otherwise, is the backdrop. Here the vast, lonely snowy mountains of Norway – beautifully photographed day or night – provide a wonderfully eerie and claustrophobic setting for the mayhem. Additionally, great use is made of a deserted, gloomy hospital in the tradition of a handful of 80’s slasher movies.
The set-up is familiar. The plucky survivor girl of COLD PREY is taken to a nearby hospital just as the bodies of her four friends (and the killer, a still-born child who lived and got lost in the mountains before going mad) are found in a crevasse. The killer revives in the morgue and resumes his rampage while, like Laurie Strode in HALLOWEEN 2, our heroine has to recover enough to stay alive. A likeable nurse, a not-too-cute little kid and some predictably doomed cops are thrown into the mix this time.
This is familiar well-trodden ground, for sure, right up to the back-from-the-dead shenanigans of the climax and the final kiss-off line. But it’s also intense, with excellent suspense scenes in the morgue, a police car and the deserted hotel of the first film. Judicious use is made of the camera, of ominously lit wide shots and the faceless, silent towering presence of the killer himself.
Blood is used sparingly so that, when the brutality happens, the impact is strong. The performances are first-rate, the music evocative and it’s all, like COLD PREY, refreshingly devoid of any of the smug irony or over-indulged back-story that cripples many of the past decade’s retro-slashers.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
