Drowning Ghost

Despite the many bad reviews about this movie, I found it really good.

Sara was a convincing acted character who gets herself involved in a rather deep mystery while researching the murder of three students some 100 years before. Eerily, while she is researching this the more recent suicide of a female student becomes entangled in the mystery.

I thought that all the actors did a good job and the camera work and music was fantastic. I was sitting on the edge of my seat right to the end - I just had to know what happened! I would recommend this for anyone who is not into a lot of blood and gore but wants to watch a movie because it has a good plot and script.

A student doing an essay on her boarding school's dark past, where three students where killed and the murderer was found dead in the lake over 100 years ago. Discovers a horrifically dark secret behind these murders and that off a recent suicide. The problem is that secret can have some big consequences on that of a respected student and his father who provides beneficial benefits to the school. While, Sarah is digging further into this mystery there's a killer on the loose knocking off people. During the hundredth anniversary of the murders a party is organised, but this night is when Sarah comes face to face with the killer.

When I got to the ending credits I thought what a big waste of time I spent on this very lukewarm Swedish slasher. Other than the freely defined camera-work and glaringly grand location, nothing else hugely appeals or breaks any new ground. Simply it looks great, there's no denying that, but its has to have more then strong polished visuals to back it up with because it doesn't go anywhere that we haven't been before and the tangled up story aimlessly plods about. If you going make a slasher with a plot structure that we've seen over and over again, you might as well go out of your way to provide the big draw cards, instead it decided to wimp out and come up with a rather mercifully plain offering. The story is very familiar that it's just simply worn out in its supposed twists and it doesn't provide much in a way of suspense, so hopefully you would ask for some blood and T&A then, well sorry it cops out on those factors too.

So what does it have going for it then! Well, actually the haunting opening scene with its pulsating score (that crops up at times) makes a better impression than it deserves. The performances are fine, if a little glum, although the characters are your standard stereotypes waiting for their chance to be killed off. Like I said the film's features are attractively glossed up. But in the things that mainly count in these films, all of that falls vapid. Please! Just add something in once in a while to make me sit up and pay notice in this drawn out fodder, because nothing, that is NOTHING (ah other then camera-work and location setting) is formidable and remotely enticing about what's happening. The deaths are incredibly lacklustre with most of it happening off the screen and when we did see one all we get was a puddle of blood in the most basic knockoff. Where was the atmosphere? Sadly with the countryside location and that of gloomy boarding school that has many poorly lit rooms, there was nothing generated to get your skin crawling and that's a sorely missed opportunity.

The screenplay is handled in a wilted manner and the script tediously strings along its muddled back-story and the coincidences that make headway are all a bit too convenient. When things start to unravel you can't stop thinking of why didn't this come sooner, as pointless scenes cement themselves and the whole mystery becomes increasingly ragged with bits and pieces from other slasher flicks that aren't hard to pick up on. When it came to the sudden climax.. it had me thinking "was that it"!? Also the final scene was a bit puzzling in what it was trying to accomplish with the suggestion. The concept could've used some blatant energy to help with the stalk and slash moments too. Hence you know you're in for a jagged time when the murder scenes are even more boring than what's happening in between them.

The film's production is well made and it might be a highly unoriginal slasher, but what killed it for me was that is was so dead flat and tame in its execution that it just moulders away without much of a spark.

A very well photographed Swedish horror fiasco, it features a creative range of camera angles and some wonderful camera movement, which keeps the film interesting on a visual level. Other than the camera-work, it is not at all extraordinary stuff. It has a formulaic story, a messy plot and run-of-the-mill characters. The acting is not much either, and is a bit overdone by some of the cast members. Just because it is Swedish does not make any difference - the film is still as trite as today's horror flicks from Hollywood that are marketed at the younger generation. However, the work of the cinematographer keeps the film from drowning.

Strandvaskaren is one of the very few Swedish horror movies in existence, this does not make it good in any way. The potential of the movie is fairly good. Old ghoulish folklore can always be used to create a great horror flick, but the director has made some incredible faults.

The sounds is bad... The effects are cheesy and bad at best. When a knife cuts someone it usually has blood on it? LOL.

The actors does an okay job with a quite bad script. So I really don't have any heavy complaints there.

But still its fun to see a Swedish horror movie, I hope that more will be done but this movie was a complete waste of time. I gave it 3/10 and consider it to be almost a to high number.

The traditional Hellestad Boarding School is celebrating its centenary, and the students are planning a big party. However, there is a dark legend about a brutal murder of three students by a local farm a hundred years ago. The killer drowned in a lake nearby and his body has been not found. One year ago, the disturbed intern Rebecka (Sasa Bjurling) committed suicide during the anniversary speech of the arrogant dean, and her deranged father escaped from the mental institution where he was lodged. The student Sara (Rebecka Hence) is preparing a composition about the tragic legend, and finds new evidences compromising the name of a traditional local family and top contributor of Hellestad. Meanwhile, two new arrivals, Leo (Peter Eggers) and Felix (Jesper Salén), become close to Sara and her roommate Therese (Jenny Ulving), and students and staffs are vanishing in the place.

My expectation with "Strandvaskaren" were the highest possible, based on the name of director Mikael Håfström. His cruel "Ondskan" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338309/usercomments-45) is a stunning movie; indeed, it is a psychological study of violence taking place also in a boarding school. Unfortunately, the disappointing "Strandvaskaren" is nothing but a conventional slash movie, with no originality, and using the same clichés of many American productions. Anyway, I like this type of predictable movie as entertainment and my vote is six.

Tiotle (Brazil): "A Maldição do Lago" ("The Curse of the Lake")