A Maldição do Lago

The traditional Hellestad Boarding School is celebrating its centenary, and the students are planning a big party. However, there is a dark legend about a brutal murder of three students by a local farm a hundred years ago. The killer drowned in a lake nearby and his body has been not found. One year ago, the disturbed intern Rebecka (Sasa Bjurling) committed suicide during the anniversary speech of the arrogant dean, and her deranged father escaped from the mental institution where he was lodged. The student Sara (Rebecka Hence) is preparing a composition about the tragic legend, and finds new evidences compromising the name of a traditional local family and top contributor of Hellestad. Meanwhile, two new arrivals, Leo (Peter Eggers) and Felix (Jesper Salén), become close to Sara and her roommate Therese (Jenny Ulving), and students and staffs are vanishing in the place.

My expectation with "Strandvaskaren" were the highest possible, based on the name of director Mikael Håfström. His cruel "Ondskan" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338309/usercomments-45) is a stunning movie; indeed, it is a psychological study of violence taking place also in a boarding school. Unfortunately, the disappointing "Strandvaskaren" is nothing but a conventional slash movie, with no originality, and using the same clichés of many American productions. Anyway, I like this type of predictable movie as entertainment and my vote is six.

Tiotle (Brazil): "A Maldição do Lago" ("The Curse of the Lake")

Strandvaskaren is one of the very few Swedish horror movies in existence, this does not make it good in any way. The potential of the movie is fairly good. Old ghoulish folklore can always be used to create a great horror flick, but the director has made some incredible faults.

The sounds is bad... The effects are cheesy and bad at best. When a knife cuts someone it usually has blood on it? LOL.

The actors does an okay job with a quite bad script. So I really don't have any heavy complaints there.

But still its fun to see a Swedish horror movie, I hope that more will be done but this movie was a complete waste of time. I gave it 3/10 and consider it to be almost a to high number.

Despite the many bad reviews about this movie, I found it really good.

Sara was a convincing acted character who gets herself involved in a rather deep mystery while researching the murder of three students some 100 years before. Eerily, while she is researching this the more recent suicide of a female student becomes entangled in the mystery.

I thought that all the actors did a good job and the camera work and music was fantastic. I was sitting on the edge of my seat right to the end - I just had to know what happened! I would recommend this for anyone who is not into a lot of blood and gore but wants to watch a movie because it has a good plot and script.

Film that can only be defined as ugly and with a plot without the slightest sense copied by other films of its kind. The acting is not bad either but the rest is really rubbish and it doesn't make the slightest sense, even when everything is explained in the end you still don't understand anything.

A very well photographed Swedish horror fiasco, it features a creative range of camera angles and some wonderful camera movement, which keeps the film interesting on a visual level. Other than the camera-work, it is not at all extraordinary stuff. It has a formulaic story, a messy plot and run-of-the-mill characters. The acting is not much either, and is a bit overdone by some of the cast members. Just because it is Swedish does not make any difference - the film is still as trite as today's horror flicks from Hollywood that are marketed at the younger generation. However, the work of the cinematographer keeps the film from drowning.