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.

Frozen

Director: Adam Green (2010)

Starring: Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers

Find it online: IMDB, Amazon

This review is in association with the Final Girl Film Club.

It's like that movie where everyone falls off the boat, except set on a ski lift. Or like that one with the sharks, but with wolves instead. Three college students take off to the mountains for an afternoon of skiing and frolicking in the snow. Things take a darker turn when they get themselves stuck on a ski lift. Perils include frostbite, Dumb and Dumber style skin-on-frozen-metal trauma, broken limbs, wolves and, y'know, it being a bit chilly up there. And one of the kids is Iceman from off've the X-Men. Talk about being typecast.

By the time it came to the Iceman VS Wolverine fight scene, it became obvious that Aronofsky had never read an X-Men comic in his life.

Perhaps surprisingly, Frozen is a really good film. Writer/director Adam Green takes a not-terribly-great concept and pumps it full of tension. There's just the right balance of bickering and whingeing, with Green wisely deciding not to play up the brats' arguing too much. The otherwise serviceable Adrift was ruined by its cast of idiots and spoilt wee arseholes. Green understands that the idea of, y'know, FREEZING TO DEATH is scary enough without needing to have his characters constantly argue about it. Whilst a couple of them might be a tad irritating, you'll root for at least one of them (the lovely Emma Bell) to get down in one piece. Equally so, there's more than a little schadenfreude to be had in seeing spoilt ski kids getting their commeupance.

It may be a minor piece, but it's definite proof that Green is good for more than just splattery gorefests (ala Hatchet and its sequel) and equally good with straight horror. There's even a cameo from Kane Hodder. All movies are better with cameos from Kane Hodder, even when he isn't stabbing people. Bejesus willing, it might cause viewers to think twice about booking that ski trip with their mates. And let's be honest, ski-ers deserve everything they get. Even that bit with the wolves.