Danish horror

[slayrrr666]

I'm going to start a couple of these from time-to-time, sort of a series of sister threads to the Mexican thread I started earlier but focusing strictly on other country's efforts in the genre.

So, how many horror films from Denmark have you seen? Trust me, there's some out there.

[Fenril]

- Kat (2001; Dir. Martin Schmidt). After her tabby cat is accidentally possessed by a demon, a woman decides to take advantage of his demonic powers to get revenge on her cheating boyfriend. Rather off-beat (through not over-the-top), with some gore, dark humor and a few nasty surprises.

- Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne (1997; aka Smilla's sense of snow. Dir. Bille August). When her child neighbor is found dead outside their aparment building, a young woman supects foul play and decides to search for the truth. "Quiet" thriller with a few surprises up its sleeve.

I assume this list is supposed to be about movies, but am including a tv series as an exception:

- Riget (1994-1995. aka The kingdom). Produced by the infamous Lars von Trier, a miniseries about a haunted hospital an the excentric people who work in it. Very much in the stile of tv shows like Twin peaks or Carnivale, slow moving, weird and with a charm all its own.

[slayrrr666]

Wow, Kat (I'm thinking that's a direct translation into English, right?) sounds really good, I'll have to track that one down/add it to my list.

Smilia's Sense of Snow is frequently shown on TV, never figured it for a Danish film but I'll give it a look now.

Beyond that, I've only seen a somewhat decent slasher, Angel of Death. It's co-produced by five other countries, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany, but it's still got Danish money behind it so I'll call it.

[Fenril]

Angel of death sounds familiar, what's the general plot (besides it being a slasher movie)?

I think you might enjoy Kat; as for Smilla be warned that it's more mistery (save the last five minutes or so) than anything else.

As for the translation that's the original title; I assume it's a cognate.

[slayrrr666]

You might recognize that one since it was released in that part of the world as Semana Santa. If you come across that film, it's the one I'm referring to.

The joke with the direct translation was that I wouldn't expect a word to be off one-letter from my own yet translate into something unexpected. For example, I wouldn't expect the name of that film Kat to be translated directly into English as Dragon or something like that. That was the joke.

[Fenril]

Oh, ok. I didn't know what you meant with Kat.

I might have seen the other movie for rental, I'll have to check.

[slayrrr666]

Yeah, for further help, it stars Mira Sorvino and Olivier Martinez.

[slayrrr666]

I can finally add another country beyond Mexico for once, having seen Smilia's Sense of Snow yesterday. Pretty overlong for what I usually care for, incredibly thriller-ish which I usually don't care for, and that made it somewhat difficult to get into this one. I will say the cold atmosphere with the village was nice and made for a decent build-up, the murders were more graphic than I expected and the ending had a good sense of action to it, but overall, the long build-up and lack of action really wasn't anything I cared for. I think it's more of a curiosity piece, seeing a film from a specific country, than anything which I'll ever own, so as I said, now I've officially seen a true Danish horror/thriller film.

[Fenril]

So you're saying, not that bad even through it's not quite your thing... I guess that's a pretty good compliment for a movie, isn't it? That it can appeal to different kinds of people?

I still haven't seen Semana Santa, I'm afraid...

[slayrrr666]

LOL, no I meant technically it wasn't bad, but in an entertainment way, it wasn't my thing. Like I said, not a lot of action and more thriller than horror, which I'm not a fan of, but it did look atmospheric and the mystery wasn't that bad. That's just the way I look at films, I can recognize quality but that means nothing to my enjoyment of a film. The two have no bearing on each other: I can find a cheap piece of crap enjoyable, and I can find a well-made and technically excellent film utterly boring. Sometimes, it's the opposite, but what I meant was that, while it looked like a good film from a technical aspect, enjoyment-wise it wasn't my thing.

[slayrrr666]

Can now officially add a Danish horror to my list, Room 205, or Kollegiet, and I have to say it was pretty good.

There's a lot of really good ghostly confrontations in here, from a big suspenseful encounter in an elevator to a couple of big shock jumps throughout the house, as an encounter in the laundry room is pretty notable and a further sighting in the bathroom gets some good mileage out of a frequently-used jump. That it actually makes an effort to be suspenseful during these moments, letting the situation escalate into a very chilling mood rather than just go for the throat is greatly appreciated and gives it an extra edge, and is the biggest part of why I really enjoyed this one. The few kills are pretty graphic and bloody, the ghosts are very creepy looking, almost demonic in appearance compared to the Asian cliche with whitened eyes and facial scars that give a really unsettling appearance in their few moments of screen-time, and are wisely kept to a minimum so as to enhance their effectiveness. The finale is superb, mixing in a lot of action and some suspense as well to get it a big boost and send it out on a high note.

If there is a flaw to be found here, it's that the film seems to need a triple-shot of adrenalin just to have the appearance of some energy, as it's very lethargic and laid-back, giving the appearance of extremely long sections of film without anything happened then punctuated with a similarly-played out jump scene. It never really has a sense of urgency or excitement to it and it tends to go through everything at the same pace and tone with the exception of it's shock scenes, which can make for a frustrating experience at times. Plus, it's never really good about it's mystery, tending to treat it as something everyone should know since it's mentioned about ten minutes in, everyone tends to react as though they're surprised this is the place where it happened, and it's never spelled out again until the end, and even then it's not all that clear.

Overall, this was a pretty enjoyable if slightly flawed affair that was a nice surprise from the country.

[slayrrr666]

Well, there's now a second Danish film in the collection, The Substitute (Vikaren).

After a small Danish school class receives a strange substitute as a teacher, the students quickly discover she's an alien researching humanity and when their cries to their parents go unheeded, try to stop her plan from coming to fruition.

This was actually a lot of fun and quite entertaining. One of the more enjoyable aspects here is the fact that this one features a rather simple premise that gains a lot of credibility because of how it goes about keeping that a secret from those that matter. How this one builds up her identity, with the fake name, the strange photograph where objects keep appearing based on the revelations made by the group and the strange mind-control properties and the connection to the chickens make for great fun, and when it gets to the confirmation sequence, it's unbelievably suspenseful and generates a great shock, as well as the science-fiction centered finale that ends this one with some fun times. There's some mild flaws here, mainly in the fact that the target of this one being centered on kids, and middle-school children even, there's going to be no deaths or even gore opportunities involved which is fine but definitely keeps this far more tamed than it should. The bigger one, though, is that this one gets revealed so early on that the amount of time taken to convince others and spread the warning to the disbelieving parents feels more like a plot device to keep the movie going rather than any sort of truthful realness had this happened in real-life, but this is still a rather fun effort.