Karusell

A typical fall slasher, designed to exploit the usual demand for horror movies at Halloween. The film was directed by a little-known Swedish filmmaker and the unusual setting was the Liseberg amusement park in Gothenburg, one of the largest in Europe. With no big mystery or gore and a somewhat misguided ending, it's a dull, formulaic and predictable slasher that will unfortunately leave the audience yawning more than creeped out. Not even the deaths caused by the "doll-faced' killer are something, because they're all disappointing and somehow lacking any spectacularity. Also, the young cast turned out to be a failure, especially since they don't have much material to work with either. To sum up, a mediocre slasher in a fantastic setting and nothing else.

It was not really much of a debate whether or not to sit down and watch the 2023 Swedish horror movie "Karusell" (aka "Carousel", though the movie was oddly titled "Halloween Park" as the title was on the screen), when I happened to stumble upon it by random luck here in 2024. Sure, I had never even heard about it prior to watching it, but that was no deterrence from sitting down to watch it.

And this was actually the first Swedish horror movie I have ever seen. Sure, I have watched Swedish movies and TV before, but never a horror movie.

Writers Mårten Gisbym Filip Hammarström and Henry Stenberg starts the movie out quite nicely in an upbeat pace, which definitely was something I liked. The storyline was actually fairly okay, and it made for a fair enough viewing experience. There was something about a horror movie set to play out in an amusement park, which is supposed to be a place of fun and laughter.

The narrative, however, took a turn for a more slow pace, after a rather intense beginning of the movie. A mere 30 minutes into the movie, I actually thought that I had sat through maybe 45 or 60 minutes. So arm yourself with some patience, should you opt to sit down and watch "Karusell".

Given my extremely limited exposure to the Swedish cinema, then I was not familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. The acting performances by the cast members were good though. It was, however, insanely difficult to understand the dialect spoken by actress Wilma Lidén.

Ultimately, "Karusell" had potential, but the writers opted to play it safe and ran with some generic horror tropes, and that sort of made it into a rather generic, although watchable, young adults running from a masked slasher type horror movie, and those were a dime a dozen back in the glory days of horror cinema.

My rating of director Simon Sandquist's 2023 horror movie "Karusell" lands on a five out of ten stars.

I love the Renaissance of Swedish horror, I really do. The problem is that every movie from the past years have been done in a similar way before.

Also, the killer reveals never work. This one could be seen after the first ten minutes of the film. Even the twist they tried to add was easy to foresee.

The actors did an okay job, but the smell of poorly produced tv-drama can never be washed away from Swedish productions.

The setup is good, though: a murderer stalking teenagers in an amusement park, around Halloween, non the less. The movie didn't use all of this potential, though. The haunted house could've been used more effectively.

Just saw the movie i have been waiting for and it was really really good i loved this movie.

I didn't have any expectations because movies sucks nowadays but this was brilliant made and great cast and didn't want this movie to end.

Sweden has done it they made a great horror movie I hope they make a sequel or 2 because this was so good

The acting was good and had a lot of jump scares and i do think i actually pissed my pants a little bit

Let's hope they make a sequel to this one too many movies has been made without ending and sequels Would love to see where they will do next ............

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I genuinely loved this film. Discovering "Karusell" has been one of the highlights of my year so far. In Taiwan, the film title was aptly translated "Halloween" (with the last syllable cleverly playing on the word for 'catastrophe' in Mandarin, which is quite intriguing). It's the best horror film I've seen this year. There are no Visual effects, no CGI, and none of those cheap jump scares where some devil suddenly pops on the screen. Instead, it showcases superb makeup artistry!

The film's atmosphere is gripping, with the compelling storyboards keeping me on edge, as well as the escalating music (reminding me of "Resident Evil").

The plot, while not complex, was yet rational. "Empathy" in this movie contributes a layer of the gravity of bullying in schools. It diverges from meaningless killing as in "Final Destination" or the "Scream" series. I don't understand why local Swedish audiences rated this masterpiece so low.

I eagerly hope the filmmakers will make the sequel.