Snarveien

I was watching this movie last night with my wife, and we were excited to see another Norwegian horror movie.

During the last years, we've had the pleasure of seeing good Norwegian horror movies like "Fritt Vilt I & II" and "Villmark", which were a thrill to see.

I really like to see horror movies with ingredients that put the setting in an "everyday life" situation, and things that can actually happen. This movie is based on a true story, and the story is good. Some of the effects are good and a little bit scary, but most of all we spent the time watching this movie waiting to be scared.

When things finally started to happen, they happened so fast and so much within short time, that it wasn't scary at all.

I liked the movie after all, had a good time watching it, and my wife didn't disagree. So, I would recommend watching it, but don't bring too many pillows. You don't need to hide...

Scandinavia is a flourishing horror movie region lately. I can easily name multiple world-widely acclaimed titles to backup this statement, like "Cold Prey", "Let the Right one in", "Dead Snow", "The Substitute" and "Antichrist". As a devoted horror geek, I want to follow and remain au courant of this contemporary genre boom and thus blindly selected "Detour" as one of the titles I wanted to watch at this year's edition of the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Films. Well … "Detour" was quite a surprise, indeed. I was literally astonished – shocked, even – about how ordinary, dull and derivative this movie was! Think the most rudimentary and clichéd backwoods/survival imaginable and you pretty much fully covered the idea of "Detour". We're talking clichéd story lines, one-dimensional characters, predictable twists, uninspired gore, lame attempts to imitate genre classics and ineffective suspense. Young couple intend to cross the rural Swedish/Norwegian border with a trunk full of illegally smuggled booze, but are forced to make a detour when the main road is closed off because of an accident. They subsequently get two flat tires, run into a deranged garage owner who watches nasty videos, meet a friendly cop who clearly cannot be trusted, pick up a confused girl in the woods and arrive at a secluded mansion owned by a mysteriously elderly couple. Lina and Martin also don't realize they're constantly being filmed by a series of strategically placed cameras all over the woods. They unwarily ended up in the middle of a snuff movie as the involuntarily lead actor and actress. "Detour" is an incredibly short movie (barely 77 minutes) and yet manages to be quite boring and repetitive. The amount of false scares and obviously transparent red herrings is enormous and the pacing is too often interrupted by dreadful dialogs and pointless sentimental moments. The gore-factor and body count are intolerable low and even the breathtaking northeastern Norwegian forestry filming locations can't hold your attention longer than ten minutes. The soundtrack is pretty cool (Norwegian black metal) and the lead actress Marte Cristensen is a beautiful lady, but "Detour" is an overall unremarkable film and not worthy to rank between the aforementioned Scandinavian winners.

Severin Eskeland made a lot of shorts but this is his first full feature and it is not that bad at all but their are a few problems. If you think you will see a splatter flick or a slasher then you better leave it on the shelves but if you want some suspense turning into a mess then this is for you. It clocks in at 77 minutes but still it takes a while before things really go wrong. Some things you can see coming from miles away, the story about the cop, who is the son of the elder couple at the abandoned house,...but somehow I kept watching. There is no gore and not that much of the red stuff so many will hate it for that but I guess Severin will learn from his mistakes and is a name to watch out for.

Snarveien, better known as Detour, is a classic Norwegian horror movie. The story is quickly told. A young couple that illegally smuggles alcohol has to take a detour because of an accident and gets stranded on an abandoned road in the woods. Soon, strange things start to happen. They get into an aggressive argument with an obscene stranger at a gas station, realize that their wheels got destroyed on purpose, run into a confused female fugitive, cross the path of a mysterious police officer and meet a secluded family with an unspeakable secret.

While the characters and the story are quite predictable, there are several things I liked about this film. First of all, it doesn't overstay its welcome with a very reasonable length of seventy-seven minutes. Secondly, the movie doesn't focus on brutal torture scenes or cheap jump scares but develops a gloomy and mysterious atmosphere from start to finish. Thirdly, the characters might be predictable but they are still somewhat interesting. Martin is a young man who tries to protect his girlfriend but can't hide that he is scared to death which makes him authentic. He gets a bonus point for wearing a cool Black Sabbath shirt. His girlfriend Lina is the heroine of this movie and turns out to be a courageous, resilient and tough pregnant woman who fights to save those she loves and everyone around her. She's a sympathetic character and viewers will care about her survival story. A special shoutout goes out to the female fugitive Lotta who manages to look attractive to me despite the incredible hardship she is going through. Only the villains are somewhat one-dimensional and their background story is poorly developed.

Snarveien might not be a memorable or innovative horror movie but it's an entertaining average horror film for genre fans with a consistent atmosphere that doesn't overstay its welcome. I have seen far more ambitious horror movies that were much worse. It's definitely a better alternative to the numerous boring remakes and sequels that are flooding the market these days.

DETOUR is a dull little Norwegian horror/thriller with a plot that we've seen play out countless times. Sadly it looks cheap and derivative, failing to bring out the isolated beauty of the forested Norwegian locations. In addition, it's a film set at night that takes place in pitch black conditions almost all the way through, so that it's all but impossible to make out what's supposed to be going on.

The set-up is intensely predictable: a young and carefree couple are driving through an isolated ___location and come into contact with the creepy locals. Bizarrely, there's a voyeur who has dotted video cameras around the locations so that he can spy on what's going on, like that angle hasn't been covered before. After a while the film turns into the usual woman-in-peril type thriller, with far too many false scares, random sub-plots that add nothing but pad out the running time, and virtually nothing in the way of real horror or fear.

I'm glad that the makers of DETOUR never descended into the fully-fledged arena of torture porn but at the same time there's nothing here to enjoy either. The thumping death metal soundtrack is headache-inducing, the camera-work is muddled and poor, and there's no characterisation so that you're never involved in the proceedings. I like Scandinavian cinema as a rule, but DETOUR is a real chore to sit through.