Besökarna

I basically think this is a great movie. It's rare for Swedish movies to be good, or even great, but this one is truly great. They've managed to keep the storyline on the track, good acting, OK special effects (not that many though) and good music. I suppose this was a medium budget compared to Swedish standards, but I think this is what you mean when you imply that great art can come out of something simple. It also involves one of the funnies movie moments I've ever seen, you'll recognize it if you see it. I highly recommend it and personally regard it as Swedish top five movies together with Fanny and Alexander, Änglagård and a few other movies. (That list is short though).

Simply an underwhelming, and clumsy Swedish haunted house film with your standard genre tropes directed without any lasting impression. Kinda low-scale, slow and particularly unevenful with frequently minor paranormal activity until the end. Think along the lines of "Amityville Horror". However there's a goofy charm (unintentional and intentional) to proceedings thanks to some questionabe, head scratching character actions/reactions, overcooked dialogues and eccentric side-characters (mailman, paranormal researcher).

Most of the storytelling is filled with family drama, growing tension and amplified squabbling (brought upon by the father's obsession over the house's strange occurances) with only a few scattered spooky atmospheric moments and a go-for-broke final 10 minutes with a climatic pyrotechnic pay-off. These well-done scenes mainly occurred during the quieter moments with a focus on vivid sound design and shadowy photography. It's just too bad whenever the intrusive music score or hamfisted dialogue delivery entered the picture it was a mood destroyer. As for trying to understand what's going on - all we get is a passage read out from a book discovered in a locked up room in the attic. It's a vague exposition dump, which doesn't share much light on the backstory of the family's new home and what awaits them if they don't leave.

Also the visual quality of the print I watched was beyond blotchy and the english dub was bad, yet amusinginly so when the characters curse their heads off... yep even the children. The family dinner table discussion regarding peakcocks will get you attention.

Even though I'm a massive horror fan, I've never been particularly fond of the haunted house sub-genre. With a few wonderful exceptions, most recent entries in the field are dull knock-offs of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, a film which was bad to begin with. Still, I've seen very few Swedish horror flicks and THE VISITORS seems to be well-regarded by the few who've seen it, so I figured I'd give it a shot. My feelings are mixed.

Plot-wise, it's what you'd expect. A family moves into a new house in the middle of the countryside. There's a lot of marital drama and the father figure (played rather well by Kjell Bergqvist) is slipping into alcoholism while losing his grasp on job security. When weird happenings start occurring in the house, the father brings in a psychic specialist and it all goes south from there.

What struck me as odd about THE VISITORS is how mild a case of haunting the family experiences. One room in the house rejects wallpaper and the cellar door keeps opening, but that's about it! It really seems like a livable case of possession to me! This makes for a slow start to a film, one only kept moving by entertaining, surprisingly solid performances by the main and supporting cast.

Unfortunately, there's not too many scares to be had. There's a couple solid suspense sequences and moments of shock, but the film mostly floats along towards its conclusion, which ups the ante a little too much far too quickly. The ending feels rushed and doesn't hit with any real impact. Factor in TV-film-level direction and a horridly cheesy music score, and THE VISITORS really falls a bit flat. It's not the worst I've seen in the genre by a long shot, but it didn't make me believe there's a lost canon of wonderful '80s horror flicks from Sweden floating around, waiting to be found.

Renting a house in the Swedish countryside, a family comes to believe the house is possessed by demons and consults a trained demon hunter to help rid them of the dangerous beings inside before it harms their family.

Overall, this one was quite an exciting and enjoyable effort. One of the more enjoyable aspects of this one is the fact that there's quite a large amount of time taken up here with getting this one to the point of featuring the house as actually being haunted by real demons here as the entire middle section here is loaded with all sorts of paranormal hunting sequences that have been featured throughout the genre for ages here with all sorts of hunting techniques and scanning equipment being utilized to fight off the strange energy found throughout the house. Coupled with the tactics of haunting here with the pounding footsteps, slamming doors and ethereal voices throughout the night it really paints quite an effective picture that really sells the haunted nature quite well. As it adds these features with the previous sequences to denote the haunted nature of this effort, the complete picture of what's happening here is even more accomplished here and it really goes to add a more imposing presence to this one with it's chilling backstory involving the demonic rituals conducted in the walled-off room as well as the ghostly actions in the finale with the attacks that come into far more focus and impact with a spectacular burning-down-the-house Gothic finale to cap it all off with. These are enough to overcome it's few flaws here, most notably it's incredibly contrived and familiar story that mashes together two similar efforts without much difficulty in spotting where the influences came from which simply highlights the overall familiar ground it traipses through. It's not in the slightest original and doesn't do much to dissuade that viewpoint by taking on those common scenes without really making any big difference in them. As well, the film does take quite a while to get through here as there's not a whole lot of interesting action taking place early on with them moving into the house being just quite excruciating to follow and makes for a wholly difficult time with this not really getting the action going while it shows them settling into the house. It's a long series of boring scenes featuring them arguing with each other or goofing around before launching into the attacks well over half-way into it and that doesn't make for an intriguing effort at all. Otherwise, this one was quite enjoyable if you overlook those flaws.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Graphic Language and children-in-jeopardy.

I am really pleasantly surprised! This Swedish movie is really simple and plain haunted house story with focus on few characters and their experience with horror. The best thing is simplicity and minimalism - everything happens in and outside house without any explanation why scary events happens which is great and original approach that simply put viewer in the same line with characters on screen. Also, actions of characters tend to be realistic as it possible - with all bad, stupid and good moves without silly heroic and/or cold approach to mysterious events in the house. Very different from other haunted house movies. Also, lack of gore and usage of light, shadows and sound instead over the top FX to produce horrific atmosphere is fantastic approach and works amazing! Even awfully bad English dubbing in the version I watched, occasionally lame acting and silly ending can't reduce real creepiness of scary scenes.

Very different view of pretty exploited theme with situations and actions that are the closest to reality if this would happen to some real family in the real world.

Highly recommended!