Our synopsis? Well it goes something like this:“About 100 years ago, three students at the Hellestads Boarding School were brutally slaughtered, the murderer drowned himself in a lake nearby and his body was never found. The story has become a school legend for generations of students as well as a yearly festivity. Sara, a student, is writing an essay based on the legend and uncovers new facts from the event that will cast dark shadows on the family name of one of the school’s main beneficiaries. On the night of the hundredth anniversary, the festivities go awry, students disappear and something dark and unknown is moving through the schools corridors…is the curse of the “Drowning Ghost” true…. and who will fall victim next?”

Yep… sounds like a winner. But then I’ve been cruelly fooled before, so naturally I’ll just have to cuddle up on the couch with my popcorn and wine coolers and see if Sweden knows how to make those scary movies I like!! So let’s all “Read On” and find out what it’s all about.

This one looked like a ghost story…. at least that’s what this lil’ Catgirl expected. I haven’t seen all that many Swedish films, but after Norway impressed me with “Fritt Vilt”, I just had to give the other Scandinavian countries a quick “look see”. What sorts of film goodies could be hiding there? “Strandvaskaren”, despite it’s title, really isn’t a ghost story at all though… it’s a slasher film from the late 1980′s as seen through the ol’ Swedish “Cultural Filter”. Is that a problem? Not really… it’s interesting sometimes to see familiar themes reflected back at you and flavored by a different language and culture.

Our story concerns a private college in Sweden, Hellestad Academy, and an old scandalous murder that occurred there a century earlier. As with all such things, there’s the grisly tradition that the crazed murderer’s ghost still haunts the school on the anniversary of the crime… prowling about with his snazzy burlap sack mask and his sharp, pointy farm implement of choice in search of fresh victims. Ahh! Old School traditions… don’t ya just love them? He’s the “Drowned Ghost” of the title, and although our killer borrows on his reputation to spread fear and terror, there’s really no ghost to be found here. So what do we have then? Well… how about a deranged psycho killer who escapes from the asylum where he’s been committed since he murdered his wife to take revenge for his daughter’s suicide on the anniversary of the murders a year earlier? Hey!! That could work!

But…. nope! That’s not what’s going on either… (Say what?…. I know, this one wriggles about more than a centipede dipped in bacon grease. It’s one hard one to pin down, not really certain where it wants to go, but fairly certain it wants to bite someone once it finally gets there…. Hehehehe!) Yep… our psycho does a stand up job of killing an orderly and making his way to the school, but gets whacked by the real killer moments after arriving. Huh? But… but..?

Alright then… maybe our film’s heroine, Sara (played by Rebecka Hemse) knows what’s really going on. She’s not the most popular girl here at Hellestad, having managed to alienate the snobbish “In” crowd led by Måns (played by Daniel Larsson) and his sycophantic cronies. You know the types…. Old money, old connections, and somehow utterly contemptuous of those outside their social circle. Making her less popular is her decision to write an essay on the old murders… and discovering some scandalous truths behind what actually happened all those years ago. Seems maybe the old farmer wasn’t nuts… that maybe some of the students raped and killed the man’s beloved daughter and then got what they deserved in revenge. All that was covered up at the time…. seems the young men were the sons of important school alumni with influence that still reaches through time till today…. The headmistress isn’t about to let Sara ruin the school’s reputation (or risk the wrath of these important people) so she makes it plain to Sara’s professor that such investigations should be left alone. So… does that mean the murderer is a distant relative still seeking to right the wrong committed a century earlier? Ummm…. Nope….

Grrrr!!! Well… how about the girl’s suicide last year? Is it relevant, or is it nothing more than another “Red Herring” to distract us? Well… the girl Rebecka (played by Sasa Bjurling) was apparently the victim of the cruel taunts and endless torment of Måns and his friends… till it drove her to commit suicide by throwing herself from the roof of the school during the big celebration held every year to commemorate the school’s founding. Oh, yes…. and turns out she’s the only surviving relative of our escaped lunatic… That’s gotta mean something, right? Well… maybe so. But then… should we be concerned at all with the two exchange students who’ve just shown up here at Hellestad…. that sort of plot element never turns out to be a coincidence, right?

By now… you are probably pretty confused… right? Carolyn certainly was, but luckily she had me to help figure out what the heck was actually going on. It isn’t all that hard, actually. The overall plot recycles nearly every cliche you might remember from such horror classics as “Halloween”, “Friday the 13th” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer”…. (including a finale on the lake lifted almost directly from “Friday the 13th”) which might seem to be a bit disappointing at first glance. Even the theme music reminds you of the old “Halloween” theme. Still, in retrospect, I’ve come to think it’s done more to give the film a slick commercial look and improve it’s general audience appeal than as a deliberate rip-off. To me it seemed more of a homage to those old films… and with an English dubbed audio track, you probably would never guess this one was a Swedish film at all. About the only thing that gives it away is the more restrained way the violence is handled. There’s quite a bit going on, but it’s remarkably bloodless overall, with many of the actual murders occurring off-screen, the bodies simply being discovered later for their shock value. In all… the ultimate conclusion is easy to figure out before the “surprise” twist actually occurs, but doesn’t really ruin the overall story.

While this one didn’t exactly wow me, it wasn’t all that bad either. The production values were good, the story somewhat congested and confused but easy enough to follow if you paid attention. I wish the heroine had been… well… more interesting, but hey, not every horror heroine can be as spunky and endearing as you’d like. Her prerequisite flaky blond BFF, Therese (played by Jenny Ulving) was more interesting, but as with “Fritt Vilt” it’s best not to get fond of secondary characters here… they don’t usually survive long. Overall, it’s good enough to get 3 “Meows” out of 5 from this girl, but not too much more. The Swedish Region 2 PAL DVD is topnotch, presented widescreen, with excellent English subtitles (as well as subtitles in just about every other Nordic language you could want) and the Trailers and “making of” featurette are nice additions. Not bad if you get a chance to rent it, but probably not a DVD you’ll need to buy unless you are as wacky a film fanatic as this lil’ Catgirl.

Trailer…. you want a Trailer? Sure Neko’s got ya a Trailer…. and here we go!

Our synopsis for it reads: “A fragile, anxious boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his stronger classmates but never strikes back. The lonely boy’s wish for a friend seems to comes true when he meets Eli, also 12, who moves in next door to him. But Eli’s arrival coincides with a series of gruesome deaths and attacks. Though Oskar eventually realizes that she’s actually a vampire, his friendship with her is stronger than his fear…“

Ah… young love…. creepy, bloody, horrific young love. Sounds like a winner here, and luckily the Region 1 release for it is just out this month from the good folks at Magnolia released under their Magnet DVD line. There was some recent controversy on the web regarding the accuracy of the English subtitles used, but trust me, the flap was mostly over nothing….

So is it worth a look see? Well…. Neko certainly thinks so, but you all better “Read On” to find out why….

This one seemed like a good choice for me…. I’m making quite the effort these days to find films that have both English subtitles to go with the original language track and the option of a nice English audio dub. Movie nights have blossomed into cozy threesomes on some evenings when Carolyn can be persuaded to join Goober and me on the ol’ couch for some snacks and a couple of flix….. One small problem….. Although she loves this goofy Catgirl, Carolyn usually finds my tastes in foreign films to be well…. just a bit hard for her to take and the subtitles are definitely a real turn off for her. So, just for my sweetie, it’s light comedies, action films, and of course romance movies with an English dub for those nights. This one seemed to fit the bill nicely thank you very much…..

This is one I missed when the Swedish release was making itself available in those genre DVD places where such gems can be snagged here in the States, but now that Magnet’s version is out, I wasted no time in correcting that oversight. It turns out I had been missing a real treat.

The film starts as it ends, in the swirling snow of a Swedish winter night…. and is gorgeously filmed by director Tomas Alfredson as a deliciously surreal story about the pain of a boy forced to live the life of an outsider by all those who fail to see his suffering and the extremes to which merely enduring it is inexorably driving him. Oskar (played by Kare Hedebrant) is a troubled boy…. he carries a knife with him constantly, and worse yet, fantasizes of actually using it to silence his tormentors once and for all…. His scrapbook is full of newspaper reports of murders and pictures of knives and it tells this Catgirl he’s just a few years shy of becoming the sort of unfortunate spree killers you hear about in the news almost everyday. But for now… he’s just a shy boy too afraid to act, and you feel for him, hoping something will change to save him from this fate. Then it does….

A strange new girl, Eli (played by Lina Leandersson), moves in to the apartment next door with a grim creepy older guy named Hakan (Per Ragnar)…. The two of them run into each other in the apartment building’s deserted playground and even though they resist it, each for their own hidden reasons, they find themselves drawn to each other as mutual outsiders and kindred spirits. Hakan spends his time alone…. and his nights prowling the streets with a black bag of knives, funnels, rain wear and other sinister gear. It doesn’t take long before he’s butchering the locals and hanging them like cattle to drain out their blood for… well…. you know what…. He’s this movie’s “Renfield” to Eli, but you can tell he’s losing his edge…. he fails to get his jug of blood from his first victim forcing her to resort to hunting the streets on her own. She succeeds in trapping a man by pretending to be a hurt little girl in need of help, but although she feeds, she gets seen…. and that’s just the beginning of the bad stuff.

Vampirism here has many of the same rules we’re used to… Eli is portrayed as much as a victim of an addiction as a person who is driven by hunger and blind need…. Like any junkie pushed to the edge she’ll kill to survive and can’t waste time picking her victims for moral reasons. She’s not shown as a good girl…. she’s not portrayed as a bad girl…. you just have to remember she’s not actually a girl at all. At least not anymore. This makes her a perfect match for Oskar, who’s slowly becoming as unfeeling towards others as she already is. We learn other neat things too….. Cats for example…. are the ultimate enemies of the living dead…. Except that they aren’t the living dead…. vampirism is more like rabies. You get bit, then you get sick and aquire all the cravings and weaknesses almost immediately even if the bite didn’t kill you. You can’t eat real food… not without some serious physical reactions. Light is fatal…. flambé fatal…. Oh, and we learn exactly why vampires always want to be invited into a house…. and it isn’t because they just can’t enter if they wanted….

This could become a trite reworking of ever similar vampire film made, but John Ajvide Lindqvist, who adapted the screenplay from his own horror novel, resists the temptation to tell that same tired story over again. Oskar and Eli are more complicated….. It’s obvious they are falling in love, but neither of them has any notion of what love really is. Their scenes together are both touchingly sweet and somehow disturbing all at the same time. Ultimately… Eli helps Oskar realize that he has to fight back against his tormentors once and for all. He’s just gonna need some backup… just the sort of thing a creepy supernatural girlfriend can provide.

It’s “Spoiler Alert” time…. and Neko certainly doesn’t want to spoil your enjoyment of this one…. About halfway through this one, both Carolyn and I figured out what was going on here…. Basically you are struck by the idea that this story has happened before. Hakan, it seems is Oskar…. only an older, more tired and just about worn out version…. he doesn’t resent Eli’s growing attachment to Oskar, but he knows his time is about up and it’s time for her to move on if she wants to survive. It’s never really stated as such, but Hakan serves Eli without the hypnotic control or the desire to join her in the ranks of the nosferatu…. he does it simply because he wants to protect her and keep her alive. Once this hits you, you’ll feel a wave of sadness as you know that Oskar ultimately will grow old and Eli never will…. she’ll just eventually be forced to seek out another kindred soul to keep her company for as long as it lasts…. Talk about doomed relationships….

Surprisingly, this one isn’t as bloody as it seems…. but it can surprise you at times. Hakan’s little acid bath facial for instance…. Brrrrr!!! The killing is not without gore, but it’s used well here and for purpose. Neither is the sexual undertones between the two pushed to an offensive or overly gratuitous level…. there is just that hint of the stirring desire that young people that age start to feel but don’t yet have an understanding of. All in all, it hits the tone perfectly…. We both really liked this film, and were teary and sad for them by the end even though they do go away together at the finish….

So…. all in all, Neko gives this one 4 “Meows” out of 5 with several additional purrs for the neat additions to the “Lore of the Vampire”. The acting, particularly by our two young leads, is excellent….. It’s truly a remarkable genre film and well worth a look…. particularly if you ever wondered what “Sixteen Candles” meets “30 Days of Night” might look like…..

There a Trailer of course…. and Neko would never let ya go without one…. Enjoy!!