Man vs the Review: Cold Prey (2006)

(This is part of the Final Girl Film Club series of reviews.  Thanks to Stacie Ponder for the selection.)

The malfunctioning air conditioner, the hastily-patched-up hole in the living room window and the Texas-in-July heat have all combined to make this a hotter-than-usual Sunday evening, so what better way is there to beat the heat than to spend a couple hours in an abandoned hotel somewhere in Norway?  Oh, sure, there's a crazed killer around, but that just adds to the charm!

First things first, I watched the dubbed version of it, since that was what was on Netflix Instant when I watched it.  I know there's a lot of virulently anti-dub folks out there, but I didn't mind too much because the dub was, in my opinion, pretty well-done (and after an adolescence spent watching Godzilla movies and localized anime on TV, I can take it.)

The first act of Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt in its native Norwegian) has us meeting our main characters: main couple Jannicke and Eirik, PDA couple Mikal and Ingunn, and quippy friend Morten.  One thing that caught me by pleasant surprise was that all the characters were actually likeable, unlike the usual slasher fare of characters who are just there to add to the bodycount.  And, yes, this is a slasher, but in the slow-burn, Carpenter's Halloween kind of way.  Instead of just establishing future victims, the film takes the time to get to know our characters before killing them off.

Our protagonists are out snowboarding on a particularly remote mountainside (where people have been going missing for decades, I might add), when Morten breaks his leg in an accident.  Inconveniently out of cell phone range (of course) and in need of medical attention, they find a run-down ski lodge where they decide to take shelter for the night.  This leads to a great shot where Eirik breaks an upstairs window and the camera pulls back ever-so-slowly to reveal more of the shadowy interior.

Here, the film trades the gorgeous snowy scenery for the cramped quarters of the ski lodge.  Once inside, resourceful Jannicke sets to work patching up Morten's leg with ski lodge booze and a discarded tube of super-glue.  Soon, the others get the power switched on again (complete with cheesy diegetic music, Dawn of the Dead style).  Mikal and Ingunn decide to sneak off for a little alone time, but when Ingunn realizes that being stranded in a creepy abandoned ski lodge is something of a mood-killer, it leads to an argument, and Mikal walking out in a huff.  Unfortunately for Ingunn, a mysterious someone picks that moment to strike.  With a pick-axe.  This is one of the film's few bloody scenes, but it's effective for that reason.  Eirik sets out in the morning to find help, but he doesn't get very far, and it's soon apparent to the remaining survivors that they're not safe alone.  What follows is a cat-and-mouse game as the friends try to stay one step ahead of the killer.

The killer here is credited simply as "Fjellmannen", or "Mountain Man".  They do give him a bit of back-story at the end (and Fritt Vilt 3 expands on it) but in this film, there's really no reason for it (not unlike The Shape, who also isn't given much motivation for killing other than "evil").  It turns out the Fjellmannen has been using the hotel as his base of operations since the '70s, killing travelers and collecting their shoes, jewelry, clothes, and other stuff (was that a Lillehammer '94 Olympics cap I saw?).  And he's got a great look, too, dressed like a ragged mountain man with a utilitarian cloth mask that resembles a featureless ghostly face.  This is put to great effect in one of my favorite shots, from the p.o.v of one of the survivors looking out a window.  We see a long shot of the Fjellmannen, contrasted by the snow, then he turns to the camera, noticing the window, and we get a quick, disturbing look at the eye-and-mouth-holes in his mask.  He's also good at the old slasher trick of appearing out of nowhere.  Without giving too much away, there was a chase scene towards the end that I just had to rewind to see again for that very reason.

On the downside, the film does have a couple of incongruous moments, like the random Burger King product placement, or the Dramatic Shotgun Reveal Music.  There's some spots of shaky-cam, too, but it's only noticeable in particularly tense moments.  I also could have done without the "shadow crossing the foreground quickly" scare that happened in a couple of spots.  And then there's Morten's unrequited crush on Jannicke.  Even though I can almost see where he's coming from, and it does lead to some nice Character Bits towards the end, it almost comes as too little, too late, because most of her Character Bits (until she goes all Laurie Strode) were about how she's hung up on Eirik.  But overall, Cold Prey is a tense, well-shot, claustrophobic thriller (chiller?) with a likeable cast that's light on the gore, but still delivers.  Recommended