cold prey Tagged Articles at Cinematical

So our good pal Peter Hall was traveling overseas, and this is how you know that "Horror Geeks" is a really awesome fraternity: He bought me a copy of the E4 horror mini-series Dead Set! Created by the insanely clever Charlie Brooker, Dead Set is about the zombie apocalypse as seen through the cameras of a Big Brother broadcast. It's a five-part mini-series that runs about 140 minutes in total -- and man, it's really something special. Knowing a bit about Brooker's snarky ways, I was half-expecting this to be a jokey sort of zombie affair, but no way man: This is full bore horror, and it's one of the best serious zombie movies of the last twenty years. As far as I know, Dead Set is not currently available through a R1 distributor, but if any horror movie is worth the few extra bucks, it's this one. Damn good stuff, well done Charlie, and thanks Pete! (Offical Dead Set website right here!)

Looks like After Dark has chosen their final film for next January's event. It will be a Korean chiller called Voices. The rest of the slate (which includes Weinberg-approved titles like Dying Breed and The Broken) can be perused via Bloody-D's handy new breakdown. And speaking of cool horror flicks I've seen at festivals, the director of Creep and Severance will be doing a dark ages apocalypse story called Black Death. Coooool.

And while I was pleased to see a DVD announcement for The Midnight Meat Train, I got a very nice surprise once I checked out the DVD cover! Cool! Thanks to Twitch, we now have some more details on the R1 Cold Prey (Norwegian slasher flick) DVD. Anchor Bay will be releasing the DVD on January 20. And while the new cover for Ben Rock's Alien Raiders doesn't exactly adhere to the movie ... it's still pretty nifty-looking. Lastly, yikes. Check out the eyeballs on Dorothy Mills!

Last year I spent a few weeks in London (Croydon, actually) at the home of a hardcore horror freak named Paul McEvoy. And since Paul is a co-founder and programmer for UK FrightFest, well, let's just say I had a whole bunch of horror flick festival screeners to pick through. It was awesome. One of those discs had the words FRITT VILT scrawled across it, and I didn't even know what language that was. Turns out it was Norwegian and the flick's English title is Cold Prey. Despite the fact that, plot-wise, it's a pretty conventional slasher flick, I quite liked Fritt Vilt, and I was pleased to learn that the sequel is on the way. Anchor Bay will be releasing the original, and you can check out the trailer and website right here.

Looks like After Dark Horrorfest decided to share their newest posters with a few different horror sites. Check out some of 'em at Bloody-D, two more at Shock, and another at Dread Central.

They had a swanky little booth at San Diego Comic Con, and now they've given Dread a new (nasty) clip for your approval. The flick is called Laid to Rest, and I'm certainly looking forward to it. Here's the official site, and yes, you should expect more gore: Director Rob Hall runs a make-up / FX house called Almost Human, and it looks like his team worked overtime on this flick.

Ti West has a new one called The House of the Devil. Early info and promo poster right here. Also at BD, a set report from the Friday the 13th remake.

Wanna watch The Midnight Meat Train right now? Online? For free? Cool. Click here. Curious about when the hell you can see Trick 'r Treat already? Nobody has an answer, but Ryan Rotten delivers a good rant anyway. Anyone out there still interested in the Creepshow franchise after the monumental crap-heap that was Creepshow 3? If so, check out the details on Creepshow: Raw right here and here.

Toronto After Dark has announced their winners, and of course top prize goes to Let the Right One In. Full details over at Twitchfilm. And then check out a free clip from the film right here.

Here are some indie nibbles to go with the pain of the Monday after a holiday:

• Norway is about to send some psychological horror our way, in the form of Cold Prey. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Leomax Entertainment has picked up the North American rights to the film, and will give it a limited theatrical run before it hits DVD via Anchor Bay. The movie deals with a group of college friends who go snowboarding. When a storm hits, they take shelter in an abandoned ski lodge -- one that puts them face to face with an axe-wielding killer. According to SIFF, it's got all the basics -- sex, tension, and horror. Unlucky buggers. It's one thing to get chased by a psycho at summer camp, where at least you have good weather to soften the blow, it's another to have to deal with it in a winter storm.
  
• Over in the UK, news is brewing over story about racism in west London. The BBC reports that Bipasha Basu and Arshad Warsi, who were filming the just-released Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal in the area, said that a few white men in a car threw a bunch of racist insults at the Bollywood actors. Warsi says: "A car stopped with a couple of white guys. They just lashed out at us and totally gave us their point of view. It's the first time I've experienced this." How classy. Maybe the pair can go hang out with the jerks from Borat.
  
• Finally, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival just wrapped, and Variety reports that the main Golden Alexander prize (which is accompanied by a check for 37,000 Euros) went to Cai Shangjun's Chinese father-son drama called The Red Awn. The film is about a man who goes back to his hometown and is faced with one heck of a surprise -- he's officially dead. This award isn't a bad start for first-time director Shangjun, who got his start penning the films Spicy Love Soup, Shower, and Sunflower. Other Thessa winners include a jury award for PVC-1and a directorial award for Estonian director Veiko Ounpuu.

"A playful film about friendship, madness and creativity," Reprise has won the Norwegian national film award for Best Film of the year. As reported by european-films.net, two other key awards, known as the Amandas, also went to Reprise: Best Director (Joachim Trier) and Best Screenplay (Trier and Eskil Vogt). Reprise has been sold to 25 territories and traveled to numerous festivals worldwide, including Karlovy Vary, Toronto, Sundance, and New Directors/New Films, but has yet to land North American distribution. Director Trier, a former Norwegian national skateboard champion, looks at what happens to two long time friends and aspiring novelists when their writing careers and romances take very different paths. The high-spirited trailer (available at the official site) displays a raucous sense of energy; I very much hope somebody will pick this up for Region 1 DVD distribution.

The Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) has a complete list of the winners. Best Actress was awarded to Ingrid Bolsø Berdal for the thriller Cold Prey (trailers; official site), Raouf Saraj won Best Actor prize for Kurdish love story Winterland (NFI info page) and Henrik Mestad received the nod for Best Supporting Role for Sons, "an intense semi-thriller" about "a young man's quest to expose a pedophile," according to Variety's postive review. Veteran actor Mestad plays the accused pedophile.

The Departed won the Best Foreign Feature Award over fellow nominees Babel and La Vie en Rose. Lauren Bacall was in attendance to receive an honorary award. The Amanda awards ceremony was the kick-off event for the 35th edition of the Norwegian International Film Festival, held in Haugesund. This year's festival will screen 80-90 features, focusing on European and Nordic titles, and runs through August 24.