So, let’s say you are looking to make a horror film in Finland. By a lake. Let’s say that your Partner is from Finland, brought up in Espoo. So you find horror movie set in Espoo with a Jussi (Finland’s Oscars) award winning actor on the bill, no brainer, right?
And it is all,sadly, a little brainless, but not quite brainless enough.
It’s all rather handsome to begin with, rather nicely shot, despite a bewildering number of cinematographers who don’t seem to have worked before or since. The leads are also rather handsome and play their roles gamely enough, but…
There’s familiarity, the male leads taking a leaf out of the duplicitous duo of Scream, their female cohorts evoking Haute Tension. And these are great reference points. Sadly they do telegraph where this is going and it gets there rather perfunctorily.
The huge problem is that it gets there around halfway through the film and then, kinda dawdles around a plot point that really fell out of it’s halfway reveal fully formed and clearly isn’t enough to sustain the remaining run-time. So you know another ‘twist’ is coming and sit there, teeth clenched, hoping against hope it will not do the obvious thing, that it will give it’s cast something they could get their teeth into. That it will surprise.
It doesn’t.
Verdict: 3 frustrated Cates.