31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Lake of Death

Lake of Death
94 mins.
Dir. Nini Bull Robsahm
2019/Norway



Lake of Death is a remake or reimagining of a 1958 movie called Lake of the Dead.  In Lake of Death,  Lillian's twin brother Bjorn goes missing at their lake house.  A year later Lillian returns to the lake house for some closure along with four of her friends.

Lillian is definitely fucked up by her brother's disappearance, she sleepwalks and hallucinates all day long.  The other characters, well they are all just a mess of writing.  There is Lillian's boyfriend and her ex-boyfriend, which not sure what the purpose any of that is as it brings nothing to the story, except for the ex to tell the backstory of a guy who used to live on the lake and went crazy, killing his family and then drowning himself in the lake.  There is the failed Olympic swimmer friend and her boyfriend, who wakes up one morning with the word dead written on his forehead, but no one really seems to think too much of it.  And finally the fourth friend, who is doing a podcast about the mysteries of the lake.  It is unclear how long all of these people have been friends or how well they even know each other, because sometimes they act like they just met.


Weird sounds and shadows are seen in the house, someone gets pulled down into the lake while they are swimming and a trapdoor to a basement is discovered in the floor that Lillian never knew existed.  Of course they go to check it out...because why not?  It's not like these people have seen Evil Dead or anything.  Oh, but actually they have.  As they make references to Evil Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street and Cabin Fever throughout the film.  Soon everyone's cellphones go missing and then eventually people.  Is there a monster in the lake?  Is there a ghost in the house?  Or is it something else?

There are plenty of tense-filled moments thanks to editor and Grindhouse extraordinaire Bob Murawski, but Lillian does so much hallucinating, it really turns out that most of the things we see aren't real so the tension quickly dissipates.  There is something mysterious definitely going on in this film and by the time it is revealed it is so rushed through, you don't really care.  Some good ideas, what could have been some good scares, but put all together and it just doesn't work very well.  Troll Hunter or Dead Snow this is not.



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