El fantasma del lago

Yet another generic Hollywood teen-slasher with lots of attractive kids getting picked off at a boarding school... except its not a Hollywood slasher, its Swedish! Of course its fun to see this kind of genre film coming out of Scandinavia, but its less fun when its simply aping Kevin Williamson films and borrowing heavily from Friday the 13th (the "lake" motif et al). Any unique Swedish identity is lost as it slavishly follows all the standard clichés of the genre: lots of confusing back-story to uncover, difficult-to-distinguish characters who exist solely to get killed etc etc.

Its disappointing that Swedish genre cinema has regressed to this after the awesome high-point of 2002's DEN OSYNLIGE, which similarly dealt with ghosts and teen murder but in a brilliantly original, fantastically entertaining manner that did not feel the need to follow any established genre rules or conventions. THE DROWNING GHOST's "by-the-book" cookie cutter approach ultimately means it will be ignored by any potential international audience in favour of identical Hollywood teen slashers, simply because they happen to be in English.