20 July 2011

Final Girl Film Club: Fritt Vilt (Cold Prey) and Nordic/Scandinavian Movies

The return of the Final Girl Film Club!

The idea of a sequel to The Shining is pretty amazing, and after the idea of that, anything is bound to fall short.   I found Cold Prey pretty decent, but lacking some needed punch. I was much more thrilled by Dead Snow.  My review will be delayed a few days for reasons detailed below.

Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Jannicke) is in an upcoming German movie called Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters with Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen (and witch Zoe Bell!) directed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) so I will be on the look-out for that for sure!


But!  This reminds me that I am looking forward to seeing the Finnish Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale.  I now regret missing out when it was at the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin last December.  Hopefully I haven't missed my only chance.


And whatever happened to the Icelandic Unholy Night?  I still haven't seen the 10 minute short, but from the looks of the trailer I was hoping it would have been made into a full-length feature by now.  Perhaps, if I am a very good girl, Santa will magically bring me a Christmas miracle this December!


So, two days before the due date, I sat down to watch Cold Prey and found NetFlix had yanked it from their Instant Watch.  I rented it on Amazon, but was disappointed to realize it was dubbed in English. I ordered a used DVD so I could see it in the original Norwegian with English subtitles.  I looked into ordering the sequel Cold Prey 2 and the prequel Cold Prey 3, but at this time there are no Region 1 releases.

Of course, this has been an issue since I started this blog.  Many titles are unavailable to me, both foreign and out-of-print.  I've bought several 80s VHS tapes that were unplayable. I've seen bootleg DVDs offered for sale online and tried one so I could see a made-for-tv movie my grandmother had taped off of PBS when I was a child (The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters).  I've shelled out big bucks for out-of-print DVDs that a few years later got a rerelease (Madman).  I've looked into getting a region-free DVD player, but even with one there seems to be a lot of compatibility issues.  I've been resisting using torrents for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it seems difficult with less popular titles.  My internet provider recently announced its 65 megabits per second service, but I am wary of getting service suspended, or getting viruses/malware.  I see lots of download membership sites I'm really skeptical of.  I feel like I'm the only one not using them.  How are YOU working around this problem?  Please comment (anonymously if you wish!)


I'd really like to see Cold Prey 2.  This girl behind Jannicke looks adorable and I love the actress' name, Marthe Snorresdotter Rovik!  The prequel Cold Prey 3 looks really great (especially the posters) but the reviews don't look as promising.  Can anyone help me figure out HOW to safely see these?






I've enjoyed recent Nordic/Scandinavian movies I've seen: Trollhunter, Dead Snow, Let The Right One In,  Kitchen Stories, and the Finnish Joulutarina (Christmas Story).   I poked around NetFlix Instant Watch to see what else was offered from Film Movement. I was so dissapointed to find Monstertorsdag (Monster Thursday) is a SURFING film!  I think I will give Troubled Water a try.

5 comments:

Bloody Mary said...

UPDATE: The Fedex man just now delivered the DVD of Cold Prey so I can watch it in Norwegian. My review will follow shortly.

LordSlaw said...

I look forward to your review. Thank you for mentioning Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. I hadn't heard about it and I love Zoe Bell.

Life Between Frames said...

Thanks for checking out my Cold Prey article and leaving a comment.

I have a region free DVD player that works pretty well, it's nice to have for movies that haven't yet been released in your region or special editions that other countries get but region 1 probably never will.

- Cody

Anonymous said...

http://horrorhaven.org/ is a good site for hard-to-find horror.

Bloody Mary said...

I started looking at region-free DVD players online on Amazon, and got spooked by mixed reviews and people saying they've bought several different players and still haven't found one that actually works. The descriptions are full of a bunch of alphabet soup, something about needing certain kind of TVs for either PAL or NTSC, and people mentioning that certain foreign special features don't play, ugh! I'm not interested in joining the Horror High Audio-Visual Club! But I will if that's what I have to do. I just want one that works and is inexpensive, I don't have money to waste on a unit or DVDs that won't work.