morrison-dylan-fan After the first two weeks of October were pretty rubbish,I started trying to catch up on Horror viewings for the rest of the month. Looking at the TV listings,I found a Horror mini-series about to air,which led to me dipping into the black lake.The plot:Gathering all his friends, Johan takes all of them on holiday to a ski centre that has never been opened. Arriving at the centre,Johan reveals that he is in the final stages of buying the place up. Over the next few days,Johan's pals get bloodshot eyes,hear strange noises,and find a locked room in the centre. Unknown to Johan's friends,the place has been left disused,after a murder took place decades ago…View on the series:Directing 4 eps each, David Berron & co-writer/(with Peter Arrhenius/Moa Herngren and Ulf Kvensler) director Jonathan Sjöberg use the isolated setting of the disused ski centre for a frosty horror atmosphere of a whistling wind filling the silences and the unexpected shutting of doors reverberating down the corridors. Laced with a tingling score from Björn Palmberg, Berron and Sjöberg mix tinted glimpses to a ghostly past with bloodshot sides of gore,that give the series a much-needed hit of urgency.Keeping all the group held up in one location,the writers set the foundation for a haunted teen horror,with some psychological depth. Running at a trim 42 minute run-time for each ep,the writers offer signs of a "body count" chiller, but freezes all hope of it coming to life,with the eps being largely filled with poorly-written attempts to explore each character,that ends in them all losing their initial motivation to solve the case. Eyeing a supernatural horror,the writers at first open the door to a mysterious slow-burn puzzle of what took place at the centre. As the episodes unfold,the writers sadly take missteps in allowing no progression in the building of the horrors, (why would no one think of breaking the door down?) until the very last moment,which to a thud of a "twist ending",that sinks into the black lake.

jgw321 Had the makings of a thriller but poor writing let it down. None of the characters had any redeeming characteristics and behaved irrationally throughout. This sort of film will work as a supernatural thriller, or as one that appears to be, but turns out to have rational explanations; but if you try to have both, as this film did, it doesn't work. Poor example of what Scandie drama can be.

willgofarr-21166 Every single character seems determined to act as stupidly as possible at every opportunity. The fact that a character has acted suspiciously gets forgotten a scene later. This happens not once, not twice but every twenty minutes or so. And it keeps happening as the body count goes up. I watched the last two episodes in a spirit of only another 90 minutes more to go.

peterrichboy When a group of good looking 20 something Swedes head off for a skiing holiday to a remote ski lodge, it turns out that more than Skiing, Schnapps and Sex are on the agenda. Unknown to them twenty years previously a family staying at the lodge had been brutally murdered. This of course means strange things start to happen. Lights flicker on and off books fly off shelves and one by one the group start acting strangely. All this and throw in a creepy caretaker and a cellar that no one will dare enter, and you have an above average thriller set in the stunning Swedish mountains. 7/10