Draug

As a huge fan of Scandanavian lore, I really enjoyed this film.

I'll admit that I'm not sharpest knife in the cutlery draw but, then again, I'm not exactly stupid either. That being said, I was lost when the end to this film eventually came into view. I think it was the last 20-30 minutes where I started to realise that I had very little idea of what exactly was going on. I'm still wondering now.

The locations are suitably bleak and moody and the acting was good. The film was a mystery tour, I enjoyed the journey, but I have no idea where it was we ended up.

The Good: The plot is fairly straightforward and makes for good horror/mystery.

Sets and surroundings are very good. The use of Swedish summer wilderness saves a lot of money and provides a suitable mood.

FX are servicable, but only barely so.

The Bad: Suffers from a lot of problems with pacing The use of filters to simulate night time/darkness is a bit overdone.

The actors tend to overact, as is often the case with Swedish actors in my experience.

A little bit more exposition would have made things easier to follow.

Summary: All in all it is, as is so often the case with low-budget productions, a film of unused potential.

Still, the effort was valiant and the choice of topics was comparatively inventive.

Expect no masterpiece because this is not it. Nonetheless, if you're into (late) viking era stuff and horror and norse mythlogy, it can provide you with some entertainment.

The historical authenticity they gave this film was great and lent a hand in shaping the horror. The actors were well chosen and I enjoyed their characters. The special effects were not AAA but it got the point across and was done in such a way you would have to really scrutinize scenes to notice. So watch this film and enjoy a good time period horror movie.

Although I got the impression the budget may have been tight, the makers of this film got everything out of it. The atmosphere of the forest was dark and the sense of foreboding it lent went along way towards making the movies low budget work well. The acting was good and the fact I knew none of them seemed to make it better. I was happy to stumble upon this film and would recommend it as a good watch if you like horror/supernatural films.