Movies
Cold Prey 2 (Fritt Vilt 2)
“Horror fans that enjoy a slasher purely based on the kill factor, this one tops most as it’s well shot, edited and packaged. It’s a top-notch production that’s burdened by a weak screenplay. Pop it in, talk with some friends, and watch the mayhem unfold in the background. It’s the only way to watch it.”
I’m a pretty big fan of Anchor Bay’s Norwegian slasher film Cold Prey (Fritt Vilt), a stylish, cold interpretation of our classic slasher franchises of the past 30 years. Learning that the producers were quickly going into production on a sequel (and planning a third film) only heightened by excitement, being that I’m always happy to have a new icon roaming around murdering folks. Like the first film, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of Cold Prey II.
Directed by Mats Stenberg, the film takes immediate cues from John Carpenter’s Halloween sequel where Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) wakes up in a hospital following the horrid events on Halloween. In Cold Prey II, Jannicke (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) wakes up in the hospital. All of her friends are dead… and so is the killer. The bodies are brought to the hospital, including our pickaxe-wielding madman. In an homage to Friday the 13th part 6, the murderer is resuscitated with a pair of defibrillators and is once again on a murderous rampage.
Stenberg delivers a beautifully shot sequel that could easily make a theatrical run here in the States (were it in English). But the problem with the film is that is incredibly generic and spends more time trying to emulate classic horror films that becoming a classic of its own. With no limitations, no MPAA to worry about, and a much more lenient set of producers, it’s unfortunate that Cold Prey II never quite pushes the envelope.
Sure, it’s a bloodbath and there are a few fun kills, but the in-between is so incredibly boring, and the characters are so one-dimensional. Even in Carpenter’s Halloween sequel the hospital attendants are fun and have some sort of characterization, in Cold Prey they’re just bodies to mutilate.
Even the story doesn’t attempt to do anything fun or clever. The dead killer is revived in same hospital as survivor from first film; he kills everyone before the two go head-to-head for an anticlimactic battle. We learn nothing more about either of them. It’s just boring, quite simply put.
Horror fans that enjoy a slasher purely based on the kill factor, this one tops most as it’s well shot, edited and packaged. It’s a top-notch production that’s burdened by a weak screenplay. Pop it in, talk with some friends, and watch the mayhem unfold in the background. It’s the only way to watch it.
From director Sébastien Vaniček, Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters July 10, but that’s just one of two brand new Evil Dead movies releasing in the next two years.
Evil Dead Wrath recently wrapped production, with the upcoming film from director Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop in Yuma County) set for theatrical release on April 7, 2028.
We’ve known virtually nothing about the movie up to this point, but a recent interview with producer Rob Tapert has surfaced this week (thanks, Dread Central) and it reveals a very surprising bit of information about Evil Dead Wrath. The film is set in 1972!!
Tapert told the students at Michigan State University during a chat, “Evil Dead Wrath is yet another great departure. It predates everything. It takes place in 1972.”
That means Evil Dead Wrath takes place even before the arrival of Ash Williams and friends to that infamous cabin in the woods, which should give the film a whole new kind of flavor.
Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness was of course set in the Middle Ages, but Evil Dead Wrath will take place chronologically before Ash Williams was transported into medieval times!
“It will feel like a 1972 movie because the director and his DP want to imitate the film’s look and feel of something that’s called Ektachrome 100, which was a film stock,” Tapert notes. “Still available. A lot of movies shot on back then. And so it’s very warm, very tungsten.”
Tapert calls Wrath “very Tarantino-esque, very deliberate. [Galluppi] made a movie, not a horror movie, that I liked a great deal called Last Stop in Yuma County. It’s worth looking up.”
The Last Stop in Yuma County, it’s interesting to note, is also set in the 1970s!
Charlotte Hope (The Nun), Jessica McNamee (Mortal Kombat), Zach Gilford (“Midnight Mass”), Josh Helman (Mad Max: Fury Road), Ella Newton (Dangerous Animals), Elizabeth Cullen (Diabolic), and Ella Oliphant will star in Evil Dead Wrath.
Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi and franchise producer Rob Tapert are producing. Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin will executive produce alongside Romel Adam and Jose Canas.