gridoon2025

«De Dødes Tjern" aka "Lake Of The Dead" (1958) is an intellectual's idea of a horror mystery: although there are some creepy moments, the primary objective of the filmmakers seems to be not to scare the viewer but to make him/her think about the "irrational" and the otherworldly (I'm not writing this as a negative, by the way). The lake setting is striking, and there is a good variety of characters representing a wide spectrum of scepticism. One thing I noticed about Norwegian films (I've done a mini-retrospective lately) is that they looove their flashbacks, and their flashbacks-within-flashbacks. **1/2 out of 4.