This trilogy of Norwegian slasher movies is sure to find a wider English-speaking audience amongst niche horror fans, courtesy of this new Blu-ray release from Second Sight, which bundles some engaging newly-commissioned special features into what’s a thoughtfully put-together package. All three films, and most special features, are presented in the original Norwegian dialogue (with English subtitles) while the audio commentary tracks are in English.
The three films trace the killing spree of the axe-wielding Mountain Man, a relentless murderer locked into an endless cycle of blind vengeance against those who cross his path following his descent into madness in the aftermath of a childhood trauma from which he barely escaped alive.
Opener Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt) tells the story of a group of snowboarding twentysomethings on a winter break in Jotunheimen who are forced to take shelter in a long-abandoned mountainside hotel when one of their number is injured. It quickly becomes clear that this isolated retreat is not the sanctuary they had hoped for, and soon the youngsters are being picked off by a hidden killer, with no chance of rescue. It falls to the gutsy Jannicke to set aside her trauma and discover her inner badass to confront the monster targeting her friends.
Director Roar Uthaug makes excellent use of the snow-capped mountain ranges in which the horror unfolds. The landscapes look fantastic on screen, and he extracts the requisite sense of bone-chilling cold and of impassable snow drifts with which his protagonists have to contend. The film conjures up an evocative sense of space and of place that locates this as a Norwegian winter drama. But the rhythms and the beats of the Cold Prey plot are more familiar. The template for this slasher is standard Hollywood stuff, even though there’s a pleasing level of interest in female agency.
Cold Prey was greeted with unprecedented box-office success in its home country upon its 2006 release, and a sequel was quickly greenlit. Released two years later, Cold Prey II picks up the story just hours after the first film’s finale. Having staggered her way down from the mountain, Jannicke is found by law enforcement and transferred to a local hospital in Otta that’s on the verge of closure (and so almost devoid of patients). After she recounts the horror of her ordeal, the police venture out into the deep snow to retrieve bodies from a deep crevasse. When the corpses are brought into the morgue, doctors are shocked to discover that one is still clinging to life, and they manage to revive him. Soon the Mountain Man is roaming the wards in search of new victims, even as the police, who have uncovered the killer’s backstory, quarantine the hospital and move in to finish him. This time, Jannicke is backed by the selfless doctor Camilla, as the two women return to the mountains for a final confrontation.
Incoming director Mats Stenberg does a decent job of ratcheting up the tension and jump scares, but loses much of the atmospheric sense of location in the shift to the interior of an anywhere hospital. That said, sole returning cast member Ingrid Bolsø Berdal delivers an even better performance as the fractured Jannicke, transforming from the traumatised survivor to avenging heroine, as once again female agency is foregrounded.
In any slasher franchise, there’s always a way to revive a serial killing monster from the grave, however dead they appear. But as Cold Prey II had seemingly brought the Mountain Man’s spree to an end, the creators of the third instalment chose the most obvious alternative to reincarnation: the origin story. Released in 2010, Cold Prey III re-runs the same premise as the original film, this time having a group of carefree youngsters enjoy a camping trip in Jotunheimen National Park. Opening in 1976, the movie fills out the traumatic degeneration of the young Geri Olav, before jumping forward twelve years, during which time Olav’s Mountain Man persona has evolved unseen. In cahoots with unhinged backwoodsman Jon, Olav begins his cull of the tourists, even as local cop Einer struggles to save the visitors.
The change of setting in the last instalment turns the franchise into a ‘killer in the woods’ story with no hint of snow until the closing moments. Stripped of anything distinctive by way of place, this descends into a derivative and by-the-numbers slasher that sees the wintry thrills of its two predecessors melt away. While the film’s timeline closed the franchise loop, it also generated sufficiently underwhelming box office receipts to seal the Mountain Man’s fate.
On this Blu-ray release, first film Cold Prey benefits from the richest collection of special features, with interviews and yak tracks with director Uthaug and actor Berdal, joined by a set of supplementary shorts. The most revealing extra material is found on Cold Prey II. The interview with one-time director Stenberg, ‘A Blessing and a Curse’, is a refreshingly honest account of the filmmaker’s process, happy to acknowledge shortcomings and wholly devoid of PR fluff. ‘Dissociation’, a separate interview with a slightly bemused Berdal discussing her work on the sequel, is equally unromanticised but just as insightful. Cold Prey III has the leanest buffet of extras, yet the yak track with academic and author Christer Andresen very effectively locates the trilogy in the wider context of the evolution of Nordic screen horror, and is continually fascinating. This limited collector’s edition also comes with a 120-page booklet of essays on the trilogy, original slipcase artwork and a set of art cards.
It’s an impressive, generous package – straining at the limits of what the source material merits – but you’ll come away from the immersive cold plunge with a much deeper appreciation of the icy pleasures that this new blizzard of native Norwegian horror swept in.
The COLD PREY TRILOGY LIMITED EDITION Blu-ray will be released by SECOND SIGHT on 6th July
