Cold Prey 2  ★★★

WHILE the original Cold Prey tends to be better reviewed, Cold Prey 2 is actually the marginally better film.

This Norwegian horror series started in 2006 with the sequel in 2008 and then prequel Cold Prey III (not sure why the switch to Roman numerals) in 2010.

In the original film, which has more than its fair share of nods to Kubrick’s The Shining, a group of snowboarders were terrorised by a serial killer in an abandoned, snow-bound hotel.

The killer, in true slasher film style, was a huge, masked character who never uttered a word, even when he was being shot and stabbed.

That film ended with a dramatic showdown on the edge of a gaping crevice between the Jason-like killer and heroine Jannicke, energetically played by Ingrid Bolso Berdal.

The sequel picks up immediately afterwards with a police officer looking for the missing group and coming across a bloodied and dazed Jannicke in the middle of the road.

She wakes up in hospital and tells her story to the police who actually believe her, posting a guard at her room and sending officers up to the hotel to investigate.

They find a heap of bodies and bring them back to the hospital morgue. Unfortunately the bodies include the killer…and you can probably tell where things go from there.

While the sequel is more visually striking, the sequel has a stronger build-up of tension and is more inventive in use of the single location, this time the sparsely-populated hospital as opposed to the abandoned hotel.

The kills are better and director Mats Stender, in his feature debut, shows he has been a good student of horror cinema with some clever camera angles and good jump scares.

Once again the film climaxes back in the snow outside the hotel with an even more dramatic fight to the death.

I’m looking forward to getting my hands on part three which looks like it will fill in the gaps in the serial killer’s back-story.