Review: Cold Prey Trilogy
A Norwegian SLASHER film? Yep. Well… no. THREE Norwegian slashers. I’d never heard of any of the trilogy, but without a doubt, they stand up alongside their American contemporaries (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc).
The trilogy begins in a remote snowy place, where a young boy with a huge birthmark runs through a blizzard to escape his pursuer. We the see him fall and get buried under snow.
Years later, a young group of friends consisting of Jannicke (Berdal), her boyfriend Eirik, and their friends, Mikal, Ingunn, and Morten Tobias are going on road trip to ski. They goof around and one of the gang ends up badly breaking his leg, but they’re too far away to walk back to the car so take shelter in an abandoned hotel.
Jannicke finds the hotel’s guestbook and discovers that the last guest checked in some time in 1975 and there is a message reading “We hope you find your son”. Inside the book, there is a picture of a family that includes the boy with a birthmark over his eye. One by one, the gang are murdered by a massive man in furs – The Mountain Man, who has a birthmark.
Film 2 starts with the lone survivor of the massacre, Jannicke (Berdal), in the hospital. She’s terrified. Informing the police of the massacre, they investigate and bring up a lot of bodies that the Mountain Man has thrown down a ravine. Unfortunately, the mountain man is one of them. All the bodies are brought back to the hospital Jan is in, and much like Jason, he comes back to life.
Film 3 is a prequel, and starts in In 1976, at the remote Stehøe mountain lodge in Jotunheimen National Park, Norway, where a young boy endures severe abuse from his parents, who then lock him in the basement after blaming him for strange occurrences around the property. It’s a bit of a ‘flashback’ film where we see his traumatic childhood, including being buried alive in the snow, which leads him to snap, stabbing both parents to death before hiding their bodies and vanishing into the wilderness.
Years later (1988), a group of six friends go on a hiking trip through the same rugged national park, hitching a ride with local sheriff Stølen, who drops them off near the now-abandoned Stehøe lodge, sharing stories of mysterious disappearances in the area from over a decade prior, unaware that the grown son, now The Mountain Man, lives.
All in all these are a great addition to the catalogue of slashers, and really enjoyable too.
