Mørke sjeler

If Abel Ferrara's DRILLER KILLER and Larry Cohen's THE STUFF were dropped inside a Magimix and the resulting concoction seasoned with a dusting of tongue-in-cheek humour it'd likely end up looking something like Mathieu Peteul and Cesar Ducasse's DARK SOULS.

The film opens with a teenage girl named Johanna (Johanna Gustavsson) jogging alone through the woods. She barely has time to build up a sweat before a sinister figure dressed in orange overalls wrestles her to the ground and bores a hole into the side of her head with an electric drill. Later, moments after she returns home, her father Morten (Morten Ruda) receives a phone call from the police pronouncing her dead. His joking and laughing is soon turned to shock when she starts vomiting up thick black bile.

It turns out she is the first victim of a bizarre wave of attacks involving a mysterious black liquid which transforms otherwise healthy individuals into mindless, rotting zombies. As his daughter slowly loses control of her bodily functions and her skin begins to blacken and decay, a distraught Morten takes it upon himself to go track down those responsible.

Fans of Chris Morris' JAM will no doubt find plenty of laughs in the ludicrousness of Morten's situation as Johanna slowly becomes his pet zombie but the film is also at times a sensitive portrait of fatherly devotion. And when Morten is shown watching old Super 8 family films with his daughter's limp, rotten body propped beside him it's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.

Lazy clichés such as the slasher movie's 'last woman standing' rule are subverted: our hero is not a nubile teenager but a bewildered, overweight father looking for the man who drilled his daughter, leaving her zombified. References to horror classics are skillful and witty, for example the homeless oil diver's expositional monologue which mirrors Quint's famous speech in JAWS. Winner of Best Horror at the Manhattan and Swansea film festivals, DARK SOULS brings slick thrills and oil spills without resorting to easy scares. 5 out of 5

Cambridge Film Festival Daily

When I bought this movie from Amazon, it was because of the title "Zombie Driller Killer". And to make things even more interesting it also said "invasion of the flesh eating living dead" underneath the "Zombie Driller Killer" title. But the movie is Norwegian and it is titled "Mørke Sjeler", which means "Dark Souls".

Anyway, I sat down to watch the movie, and was frankly speaking more than a little disappointed. The "Zombie Driller Killer - Invasion of the Flesh Eating Living Dead" is nothing more than a cheap trick to lure in people looking for a zombie movie. This is nothing at all like a traditional zombie movie in any way possible. This movie is about some man in an orange jumpsuit that drills into women's brains and injects some liquid that initially kills the victim, but makes them come back from the dead. As zombies? Well, perhaps, but there is no flesh eating participating anywhere in the movie at all. False advertising on the cover in the worst degree.

Story-wise, then this Norwegian horror/thriller movie is fairly weak, especially compared to "Død Snø" ("Dead Snow"). The movie trots ahead t a fairly monotone pace, as we follow Johanna's father in his search for the one who turned his daughter into a brain-dead 'vegetable'. The story doesn't really offer any scares or surprises.

The movie is not all bad though, there are aspects of it that are great. There is a good continuous flow to the movie, as it trots on. And the dialogue is alright as well - just know that it is in Norwegian (if you don't enjoy foreign movies).

The acting in the movie was good as well, of course not really award-winning material, but people did good jobs with their given roles. And not having seen that many Norwegian movies or television, then it was good to have a whole bunch of fresh faces that weren't associated with previous roles and characters.

A warning to gore-hounds and zombie aficionados out there, this movie is by definition NOT a zombie movie, and you might up just as disappointed with this movie as I was.

"Dark Souls" starts out like dozens of other horror movies do, namely quite typical and straightforward, with an attractive female jogger getting killed in the woods by a psycho with a drilling device. Less typical, though, is that the girl's corpse comes back to life in the morgue and return home where she continues roaming around as a zombie and pukes up black goo. In the following month, 37 (!) similarly inexplicable murders/resurrections occur that baffle the Oslo police, and only the father of the first victim undertakes action.

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? I thought so too, and I had reasonably high expectations for this seemingly morbid and original Norwegian horror flick, but the sad truth is that "Dark Souls" never truly takes off. The plot never surprises and there appear to be more holes in the logic and structure of the script than in the heads of the victims. There are a couple of nice gory bits, like when the prostitute in the abandoned factory receives an extra hole in her face, but the budget is too low to do much more. The pacing is slow, the entire middle-section is boring, and the conclusion is disappointing. Give it a miss.

This is so Horrible. The tailer so so good & professional. Its looks so real. So far too good man. Good Acting done by all the actor. I feel so sacred when i saw this...This is fabulous. The all action seen was mindblowing... And the spacific reason is too sacred part the Unknowing man who is killing so good man.

This story is unique. So tragedyous this is call a bomb movie. How strength of the movie I like the. How the killer kill all the human. This is so scared. I really scared by watching this tailor.. love it... this is so coolwant to watch this movie as soon as possible. Really excited about this movie.

This is the definition of a real classic movie.

I just have goosebumps when ever I watch the movie, it's a piece of art.

Directors and writers Mathieu Petuel and César Ducasse obviously know their horror. There's a deliberate, unhurried pace from start to end and, as with so many other effective horror movies over the years, the pacing is used to build tension and to unsettle the viewer. This isn't your average American slasher, filled with jump cuts and loud bursts on the soundtrack in a vain attempt to summon up scares, everything here is designed more to pick at your nerves and unsettle, apart from the occasional head drilling, of course. The acting is generally fit for purpose, so while it won't win any awards, it does engage your sympathy in all the right ways, and Morten Ruda is the stand out, carrying more of the narrative as the movie progresses and allowing the mix of off-kilter laughs to blend perfectly with the feeling and the pain.