Floresta das Sombras

I am from norway, and I am also very patriotic conserning my country. I think this film may be alot more scary for us, as norwegians (or scandinavians) than it is for americans or whatever. Because of this, I think it is unfair of imdb.com to speak such bad of it.

The Woods have always been an important part of the norwegian "tradition", and it is very appriciated. Therefore, I find it particullary scary since the setting takes place in a typical norwegian forest. Never before, have I seen a horror-film so realistic made, because of the setting, and the language. (Norwegian)

"Villmark" is indeed a good (Except the ending ;)) horror-movie which Norway, as a folk, should be very proud of. It scared the hell out of me and my friends.

Regards,

• GnarusLeo - 18 of age.

Log cabin, scary woods, humans going back to nature. Classic ingredients for a horror, which could either be painfully repetitive or well executed. It's certainly the latter. Shot like an autumn nightmare, the film is creepy even in the sunlight. It makes use of all the fading greens, browns and grays. It also does well in not overplaying the reality TV angle, in fact it's rarely mentioned. The characters are also mature young people, not maddeningly annoying teenagers. They develop throughout the movie and at no point does anybody do anything idiotically befuddling. No wonder there's a low body count with intelligent pray taking the focus. The ending does leave too many questions, despite giving a lot of answers in the last 2 minutes. A great horror watch.

A frightening Norwegian Thriller

8/10 Author: Ajit Tiwari from India 26 December 2011

Scandinavian cinema has always been a different genre. the depiction of character, the screenplay, subtleness etc. are always top notch.

A perfect example is Villmark (2003) AKA Dark Woods a creepy Norwegian horror or more than a horror.

Set in the Norwegian landscape, a TV crew and their fanatic boss want to shoot a show to survive in the wilds which will eventually make a mark in Reality television history. He (Gunnar) has gathered a production team of four people. The team goes to Gunnar's log cabin where he used to spend summers as a kid. And soon the crew has to survive the thrill, horror, suspicion and mistrust.

The choice of the cast is fantastic and we see some amazing performances which will keep the adrenaline up and frightening atmosphere almost up to the mark.

However there are some resemblances with "The Blair witch project", but it's original and scary enough, screenplay is far from clichés.

European movies more open to interpretation and not made for certain targeted audiences. It's up to the viewer, to read between the lines and understand the happenings.

An astonishing thriller.

My Vote 7.1/10

Villmark does a lot of things right. The setting works well, and the back story that is gradually revealed is OK. I quite liked the idea of the reality show producer who wants his crew to be to handle what the contestants are to go through. The characters work alright, even if they aren't that interesting.

It seems from the DVD that they struggled a bit with finding a good way to end the movie, and while the one they chose was better than some of their other suggestions - it was still really bad. The last revelation makes no sense. I can see them wanting to open up for the possibility for a sequel (hey, one is coming this year!), but this was not the way to do it.

I don't usually watch horror, and especially not slashers (if you could call this movie that). From what I know from these kinds of movies, "Villmark" sure fits the typical formula for such a horror. What made me interested was the cast (Kristoffer Joner and Eva Röse) and the fact that it's a scandinavian horror. There's not much of it out there.

The film is clearly low budget, but they make do with what they have and manage to create decent horror. The ending was a bit weak, but the build up was well done. It's not really my type of movie, but if you like this genre it probably satisfies you. It's good for a low budget movie, but just an all right movie in general.