Foreign Rehash: Cold Prey

If you have nothing new to say, just make the same movie again...apparently.  Today's film is Cold Prey, a Norwegian film that is mostly 'been there, seen that.'  Is it bad?  No.  Is it something that I definitely needed to see?  Maybe not.  The story is something you've pretty much seen many, many times before.  The difference- the location.  Yeah, that's about it.  I suppose that I could waste some more lines talking about the Director or Stars, but...I don't know any of them off-hand.  To be fair, I doubt that they know who I am either.  The place: a snowy mountain.  The people: a bunch of young adults.  The killer: well, that's something to find out later.  To see if anything new of note happens, read on...

The film begins with a weirdly-birthmark-sporting kid running in the snow.  He kind of looks like the Marvel Comics Character named Domino.

This ends abruptly, but anyone with a brain can figure out why we are seeing this.  If they had tried something different, it might have actually surprised me.

After that, we get real-looking News footage talking about how people go missing in the Mountains.  Gee- that's where are heroes are going!

As a side-note, if this is real footage of the News (which it may be), isn't this a little bit tacky?  Presumably some of these real people died, right?

So we have five people going off to go skiing.  We have two couples and Comic Relief Guy.

We see this in Movies all of the time, but does anyone travel like this?  It makes you feel bad for the fifth guy.

It's not long until Fifth Wheel hurts his leg and they need to get help.  Horror Film Cliche in 5...4...3..2...1

Now that the obvious is out of the way, they go to a nearby Cabin.  It's just as long of a walk to get to their vehicles and leave, but...then we wouldn't have a movie.

They wander around a bit and get comfy.  Yeah, I'm sure that your friend's barely-set leg will last while you 'chill out.'

Eventually- once the film is done setting up characters and showing us the house- the Killer finally gets a victim.  He takes out one of the girls, threatening to make Fifth Wheel slightly-less out of place.

Incidentally, putting a mask on your killer when his identity is obvious = kind of pointless.

Somehow nobody notices the girl missing- thinking that she's just in her room- or the massive pool of blood left in the hallway.  They *finally* decide to send one guy out for help, but...well, it doesn't end well.

Naturally, the Killer doesn't actually kill the guy.  We only have five people to kill- we have to pace this out.

To make a relatively-normal-length-story short, all but our heroine are killed.  The Killer takes the bodies out to dump them, since...well, nobody is around at all.  Why are they hiding them again?

Regardless, it gives us the film's most interesting visual- her P.O.V. of being dragged- and tensest moment- her waiting game to strike.

Shockingly, our Final Girl takes out the Killer and learns that he's...the birthmark-sporting kid from the beginning.  Oh no- it wasn't obvious at all!

She survives to wander down to a nearby Village, apparently setting up a Sequel to check out later.  The End.

It's not a bad movie.  If you like Slasher Films, this is a solid one.  My big problem is just that I have seen this movie before- many times.  Think about it for a second, won't you?  Group of people goes to a remote location and discovers a killer/killers there.  Does that sound familiar?  The most obvious example is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Beyond that, we have other American films like Wrong Turn or The Hills Have Eyes.  It's not just American, of course.  If you're more into French films, there's Frontiers and High Lane.  Hell, I just watched a film about something like this in the last Round of Project Terrible- Creature.  Actually, come to think of it, the only other film from Norway I've done- Dead Snow- kind of gets into this same territory.  I will say again that this is not a bad movie.  I guess Norway needed their own generic Slasher Film to call their own.  Good for you.  It's just a shame that they couldn't take a basic film idea- e.c. a Vampire tale- and do something different with it- e.c. Let The Right One In- for a change.  I know that there is a Sequel out there available (and a Prequel that Netflix doesn't carry).  I will give it the benefit of the doubt and see if it is good or not.  After all, it can't be worse than most of those Wrong Turn Sequels can it...right?  I'll leave you with a glimpse of what you in the North is probably experiencing right now...

Next up, let's look at the companion film to Mondo Bizarro.  It has more Strippers, less plot and is just as fake.  Stay tuned...