Detour

Snarveien, better known as Detour, is a classic Norwegian horror movie. The story is quickly told. A young couple that illegally smuggles alcohol has to take a detour because of an accident and gets stranded on an abandoned road in the woods. Soon, strange things start to happen. They get into an aggressive argument with an obscene stranger at a gas station, realize that their wheels got destroyed on purpose, run into a confused female fugitive, cross the path of a mysterious police officer and meet a secluded family with an unspeakable secret.

While the characters and the story are quite predictable, there are several things I liked about this film. First of all, it doesn't overstay its welcome with a very reasonable length of seventy-seven minutes. Secondly, the movie doesn't focus on brutal torture scenes or cheap jump scares but develops a gloomy and mysterious atmosphere from start to finish. Thirdly, the characters might be predictable but they are still somewhat interesting. Martin is a young man who tries to protect his girlfriend but can't hide that he is scared to death which makes him authentic. He gets a bonus point for wearing a cool Black Sabbath shirt. His girlfriend Lina is the heroine of this movie and turns out to be a courageous, resilient and tough pregnant woman who fights to save those she loves and everyone around her. She's a sympathetic character and viewers will care about her survival story. A special shoutout goes out to the female fugitive Lotta who manages to look attractive to me despite the incredible hardship she is going through. Only the villains are somewhat one-dimensional and their background story is poorly developed.

Snarveien might not be a memorable or innovative horror movie but it's an entertaining average horror film for genre fans with a consistent atmosphere that doesn't overstay its welcome. I have seen far more ambitious horror movies that were much worse. It's definitely a better alternative to the numerous boring remakes and sequels that are flooding the market these days.

It's actually harder finding this movie with its English title (Detour), then finding the hiding place of Santa Clause. Seriously though, this little slasher movie is pretty decent. It's straight from beginning to finish and delivers on its premise. Of course you have to suspend your disbelieve here and there, but then again there's almost no movie out there, who doesn't ask that from you.

What I liked, was the fact, that it stayed true to its premise and was mean and lean. Not too much and not too little. You know what you are letting yourself into, when you rent/watch this movie. It's low budget and has quite a few flaws of course. It's up to you, if you like those movies or not ... if you do, give it a try!

Snarvein is a new horror movie that also includes the Wilhelm scream. The Wilhelm Scream was created by Sheb Wooley in 1951. Sheb Wooley was an actor that played the character Pete in Rawhide. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino use the wilhelm scream all the time in their movies. Other movies that have the Wilhelm Scream are Under the Tuscan Sun, Date Movie, Willow, Texas, Bolt, Dragonball evolution, Tooth Fairy, Once Upon A Time in Mexico, Street Fighter, Star Trek the Motion Picture, Over Her Dead Body, Wrong Turn 3 left for Dead, The Mist, Flushed Away, History of the World Part 1, Meet the Spartans, Watchmen, Time Machine, Howard the Duck and The Green Berets. Plo keywords, Horror, Wilhelm Sercream thriller.

DETOUR is a dull little Norwegian horror/thriller with a plot that we've seen play out countless times. Sadly it looks cheap and derivative, failing to bring out the isolated beauty of the forested Norwegian locations. In addition, it's a film set at night that takes place in pitch black conditions almost all the way through, so that it's all but impossible to make out what's supposed to be going on.

The set-up is intensely predictable: a young and carefree couple are driving through an isolated location and come into contact with the creepy locals. Bizarrely, there's a voyeur who has dotted video cameras around the locations so that he can spy on what's going on, like that angle hasn't been covered before. After a while the film turns into the usual woman-in-peril type thriller, with far too many false scares, random sub-plots that add nothing but pad out the running time, and virtually nothing in the way of real horror or fear.

I'm glad that the makers of DETOUR never descended into the fully-fledged arena of torture porn but at the same time there's nothing here to enjoy either. The thumping death metal soundtrack is headache-inducing, the camera-work is muddled and poor, and there's no characterisation so that you're never involved in the proceedings. I like Scandinavian cinema as a rule, but DETOUR is a real chore to sit through.

Severin Eskeland made a lot of shorts but this is his first full feature and it is not that bad at all but their are a few problems. If you think you will see a splatter flick or a slasher then you better leave it on the shelves but if you want some suspense turning into a mess then this is for you. It clocks in at 77 minutes but still it takes a while before things really go wrong. Some things you can see coming from miles away, the story about the cop, who is the son of the elder couple at the abandoned house,...but somehow I kept watching. There is no gore and not that much of the red stuff so many will hate it for that but I guess Severin will learn from his mistakes and is a name to watch out for.