I enjoyed this one. It was slick and had a great setting.

7/10 ( B )

B+


Cold Prey took be aback when I first rented it a few years ago. I didn't expect much of a Norwegian slasher that just seemed to recycle the usual ingredients of an American slasher flick. In fact, it does offer little new, but what it does offer is the best one can do with tired material.

The movie deals with a group of young people who want to go skiing in some remote mountains. After one of them breaks his leg, they are stranded in an abandoned hotel. Which is of course roamed by a killer. There are the usual clichés. There's a blond chick who is shown in her underwear (when she gets offed). There's the tough final girl. And there's some romance along the road. So much for that.

However, even redoing the old stuff, the director does almost everything right. Where it loses points for originality, it gains for nice cinematography (not too difficult in the Norwegian mountain landscape admittedly), solid direction and many very suspenseful scenes. It's rather rare nowadays to see a slasher flick that can actually convince in the suspense department. Most of the current slashers are just about young people being slaughtered in brualt ways. This movie does have some nice kills, but they are far from being the emphasis. The director is going for tension and scares here and he mostly succeeds. It's a typical slasher (maybe except for a rather interesting final twist), but among the best I have seen this decade (and above 90% of similar films that Hollywood churns out). It does not reinvent the genre, but shows its strongest sides.

They cast is solid, the characters somewhat relateable, partly rather well developed. The audience doesn't have a hard time rooting for the final girl. At the end, of course, the killer's killed (but actually he's not) and the final girl survives. This films bears many similarities with The Descent. There's the unusual landscape (snowy mountains vs. caves), there's a strong leading female character...and there's the absolutely unnecessary sequel that pretty much starts off right where the first film ended.