Cold Prey  ★★½

THERE are a lot of things going on in the 2006 Norwegian horror film Cold Prey.

Hailed by some as one of the best modern Norwegian horror films, it starts with a boy being chased by someone or something through the snow and then being buried down a crevice.

Then we go to a series of television news highlights and newspaper clippings suggesting that the Norwegian wilderness may not be too dissimilar to the Australian outback with serial killers feasting on the tourist trade.

During the film we also have several nods to The Shining with the snow-bound setting in an old hotel, horrors in a room knowingly numbered 237 and people being chased through the corridors by an axe-wielding maniac.

Unfortunately, that’s where the similarities end with Cold Prey being a fairly standard story of five friends out snowboarding who find themselves staying at the old hotel and disturbing said killer.

There is some nice scenery, tension in some of the kills and the characters tend to act fairly realistically, which is rare for this type of horror film.

Ingrid Bolso Berdal is effective as the lead heroine Jannicke, realistically portraying her gradual shift from the most resourceful of the group to the best equipped to fight her way out of danger.

The film is directed by Roar Uthang who went on to make the terrific Norwegian earthquake/tsunami disaster film The Wave in 2015 and the surprisingly decent 2018 Tomb Raider re-boot, his first American film.

Cold Prey is effective at times but nothing to write home about – unless you do a movie review blog. However, it performed well enough at the box office to spawn a 2008 sequel and 2010 prequel and looks like getting a Hollywood remake.