Skjult

Those looking for a typical slasher film need look elsewhere. This is a horror/thriller that takes it time to catch you off guard.

Kai (Kristoffer Joner) inherits a house after his mother's death. It is pretty decrepit. Perfect for a horror film. In it he finds a lot more than he bargained for. Me? I would have been outta there in 5 minutes! KK (Joner) is dealing with memories and replays from a past that holds secrets. Secrets about the abuse he suffered as a child, and secrets about things he did.

It takes place not only in the house, but also in the woods, which really adds atmosphere.

It is nice to see horror films that pace themselves and use startling effects and heavy atmosphere to thrill you instead of over-the-top Hollywood effects. Horror is becoming the domain of the Europeans, while Hollywood engages in torture porn.

Pal Oie's second long-feature film is largely reminiscent to his 2003 effort "Dark Woods"; which regrettably also means that he makes the same mistakes and trips over the exact same obstacles. The filming locations and scenery are truly breathtaking and the thematic influences of ancient Norwegian folklore tales are very intriguing, but the story never really appears to develop itself and eventually drowns in its own atmosphere of mystery and complexity. Oie serves an attractive potpourri wholesome of dark family secrets, alleged schizophrenia and spiritual connection with nature, but everything remains rather vague and incoherent. The somewhat unworldly and introvert Kai Koss returns to his remote backwoods hometown because his old mother passed away and he's the sole heir to inherit the ramshackle parental mansion. Kai Koss isn't too keen to return because his mother abused him and regularly locked up him up in the basement, and the people he grew up with always considered him to be a social outcast. His homecoming coincides with the disappearance of a two young campers that were last seen in the woods surrounding Kai's house. The local vigilante squad naturally suspects him, but he himself is convinced that Peter is behind the strange occurrences. Peter was a young boy who witnessed his parents dying in a car crash and then fled into the woods. Kai senses that Peter still prowls around the area even though the police holds strong evidence that he fell into the waterfall and died. "Hidden" is the type of film that keeps you staring at the screen with interest simply because it's beautifully shot and masterfully stylish. So beautiful and so stylish, even, that you don't immediately notice the lack of development. Kristoffer Joner – also the lead in the aforementioned "Dark Woods" – is a terrific actor and Hordaland is most definitely a county in Norway that I will visit sooner or later, but "Hidden" is sadly little more than just another pseudo psychological horror portrait

Is anyone else confused?

Let's start with how well this film has been shot. The locations chosen as the backdrop for this story were awesome. The beautiful waterfall, surrounded by a grim forest and a dilapidated house are visually perfect for a horror film. This setting is probably what I liked most about it. It had a fair amount of suspense and a small amount of blood but I really can't agree that this falls into the horror genre.

I watched this because I found it on a list of the best foreign horror films so my expectations may have been set a bit high but I was disappointed. Without writing a bunch of my thoughts, I'll just say that in my opinion, this movie was all over the place and left too many unanswered questions for me to consider it a top notch flick. It just failed to deliver.

*Story and characters* The character in this particular movie is very silent. Read the plot, then it gets clear why. This Norwegian movie surprised me big time! The main actor plays his part very well. As well as the supporting roles are well worked out with exception of one. I do blame the actor for that (who plays Roy) he is a very obvious misfit actor to play his role.

Offcourse remind you, is subjective but still worth mentioning. The movie storyline is not to obvious until halfway the movie then you get the "clue" very easy. I like that, most really B-flick from the 1st min to the end is to predictable. This one is not, and if the clue is out the movie progresses as such. Meaning that the do not try to enhance the mystic around it no more.

So i would say the characters (mainly the main character) and the storyline are pretty good! *Hack and slash! or....* Thats what i love about this movie! It is not a obvious hack and slash movie. In the entire movie FEW ppl get killed and still managed to keep me at my seat. It is a real suspense horror/thriller movie, and thank god not a Jason Voorhees kind of ripoff! Excellent, and very enjoyable to watch. The langue Norwegian do not worry there is very low on dialog to begin with. But even then it is not a pest true out the movie.

*Overall* Great suspense thriller/horror. The did a excellent job and this movie is well worth a watch! It has the feel of seven good camera-work nothing cheesy i could detect about this movie. This is one of those, yeah indeed with a low budget you can make a kick-ass movie.

I expected to like this movie since I liked the movie "Villmark" by the same director, but sadly no. The main actor, the filming, the music and sound was good, but: The script was a mess, with people behaving and speaking illogicaly (not just horror-movie-illogicaly like "let's-go-into-the-dark-woods-to-look-for-our-missing-friends-despite-the-serial-killer-illogical), but unnatural in the contexts of the scene the characters are in the movie. The main character does things several times during the movie that in the real world would have gotten him arrested, but he is never arrested, his action seems at times to have no reason since they are rarely explained in the movie making the viewer have to guess time after time, the clues about what have happened and what is happening jumps back and forth between mystery/horror/occult/crime making the movie more confusing and messy than scary/thrilling. And people in this movie are EXTREMELY good at finding Kai Koss, even in the middle of the dark woods, while they at the same time seem to be unable to find the tip of their own nosees during daylight...