The Final Girl Film Club: Cold Prey

This review is in association with the quite wonderful Final Girl Film Club

Director: Roar Uthag (2006)

Starring: Ingrid Bolso Berdal, Rolf Kristian Larsen, Viktoria Winge

Find it: IMDB, Amazon, Final Girl

Essentially the same sort of thing you've seen countless times by now, only with snow instead of trees and pretty Norwegians instead of pretty Americans. Snow is better than trees though, and the Norwegians are actually slightly prettier than the Americans we're used to, so it's better on that front, I guess.

Everywhere else, it's business as usual. Five friends take a snowboarding vacation in the snowy wildernesses of Jotunheimen. I would swear that Jotunheimen is where the Ice Giants live in Thor, except it's probably a little bit racist, so I won't. The most likeable of the menfolk falls and breaks his leg after only a few minutes of being out in the snow. Seems that being an idiot isn't just a thing they do in American slasher movies. This is but the first of several dipshit moves made by our friends. They carry injured Morten Tobias (not only is he the most likeable, but he has the best name) to a seemingly abandoned lodge and settle down for the night. Which translates to breaking windows and treating the place like they own it.

Bum move, kids. The lodge is not so abandoned after all, and run by a hulking great nutter with a pickaxe. The very prettiest of the group gets it first, but not before expending the opportunity to wander around in some very tight undercrackers, flashing a very pert bottom to any serial killer in the near vicinity. From that first death onwards, it's a fight for survival, leaving the strong but scowly Jannicke (Berdal) to fend off the killer.

'Careful', as my old nan used to say, 'if the wind changes, your face'll stick like that.' Big problem if you're in Yodenheim Jotunheimen.

Other than there being a bit of snow outside, Cold Prey rarely departs from the template as set by every backwoods horror since The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. There's even room for a bit of violence via bear trap. Which came, funnily enough, just as I was thinking "all this movie is missing is a bear trap". The rest is all pickaxes at dawn and some useless fumbling with a shotgun. Huh. Kurt Russell would've made mincemeat of the lot of them with his beard alone.

The kids are fine but vaguely annoying with their stupidity. Thankfully, the most irritating of the characters die first, whilst Jannicke is a decent if uninteresting Final Girl. She looks a lot like my ex actually (especially with all of the scowling) so I was kinda rooting for the killer; but only up to the point where she realises she's made a massive mistake, her new boyfriend's an arse and she should have stayed with Joel instead of going snowboarding. Yeah, Cold Prey sure showed her.

Cold Prey is predictable, slow, a little bit annoying and stupid. But it's also inoffensive, well-acted and looks beautiful. There's one shot in the final scenes that shows what the movie could have been if it had tried, whilst some of the kill sequences are admirably cruel. The killer looks good, and the movie's environment is enough to justify its existence. Mostly though, it just left me feeling Cold.