Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not always be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Woodlands and mountainous terrains are unsafe places to be in Norwegian horror movies. This distinct resurgence in hinterland horror, which includes the likes of Cold Prey, Dead Snow and Trollhunter, is a direct effect of the 2003 movie Villmark. Director Pål Øie highlights the challenges urban dwellers face when they leave city comfort behind and venture deep into their homeland’s beautiful yet daunting backcountry.
Øie’s debut draws inspiration from Kåre Bergstrøm’s Lake of the Dead as well as Western slashers squarely set in outlying areas. Because of this, Villmark, also known as Dark Woods, equally functions as a whodunit and a supernatural movie. The film makes every effort when revealing both the splendor and potential dangers of the environment as a reality show’s production team scouts a filming location ahead of the cast and cameras. The crew’s growing wariness of not only the great unknown but also their boss’ insidious change in disposition becomes crucial to the audience’s sustained unease.
In Villmark, Gunnar (Bjørn Floberg) leads a team of four into an uninhabited part of the Kaupanger mountains so they can familiarize themselves with Real TV’s future shooting site. Yet when Gunnar, along with Lasse (Kristoffer Joner) and Per (Marko Kanic), finds the body of a dead camper in the nearby lake, his behavior changes; Gunnar puts off informing the police or the rest of the crew (Eva Röse, Sampda Sharma). The secret wears on the men, and their internal panic finally manifests as they realize they are not alone in these woods.
Villmark dittos the actions and structures of the cabin and wilderness horrors that came before it, but Øie and writer Christopher Grøndahl leave a trail of plot breadcrumbs that imply a supernatural force is really at play. The underlying cause of the film’s terrible events has to do with the lake where a German Nazi plane crashed during World War II. Since then, the water refuses to freeze over in winter, and swimming is inadvisable. Eco-horror has a long history of punishing those who do harm to mother nature, but this movie goes one step further and uses the lake to sponge and transmit a different kind of man-made pollutant. All that remains is a reminder of humanity at its worst.
A place already so grossly misused in the past now sees everyone as invaders. Nature cannot yell for help, so it uses unique measures to remove threats. Whether that hazard be Gunnar and other homocentric people who wish to appropriate the land for their own selfish desires, or a descendant of the aforesaid German Nazis, the lake and its vicinity are on the defensive. The locals operate with a similar purpose, and based on the disturbing revelation in the film’s conclusion, they too want to expel anyone who poses a risk to their culture or the region.
Villmark performed well enough at the box office to warrant an immediate sequel, but until Øie returned to the lake seen in the first film, he had no viable story to tell. Everything changed once he saw Harastølen on the mountainside, though. The empty tuberculosis hospital then serving as his muse, the director and co-writer Kjersti Helen Rasmussen penned a script that expands on the lore developed in the original movie. Villmark 2, which goes by Villmark Asylum in some parts, does not pick up where the last movie ended; knowledge of the previous story is helpful but not wholly necessary. The sequel instead follows the contract workers — Live (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), Ole (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), Frank (Tomas Norström), Even (Mads Sjøgård Pettersen), and Synne (Renate Reinsve) — put in charge of clearing a derelict sanatorium before it is torn down. The edifice appears vacant with the exception of a suspicious caretaker named Karl (Baard Owe), but soon enough, the work crew meets the hospital’s other residents.
Villmark has its characters succumbing to horrors lurking on the outside, whereas the second film brings that terror inside. Water is pumped in from the accursed lake and surely has all to do with the sanatorium’s goings-on. The real-life Harastølen closed because a TB vaccine was invented, but this fictional hospital conducted torturous trials where children of war — those born from taboo German-Norwegian unions in WWII — and their outcast mothers were experimented on. Every inch of the sequel acts on or reflects the anxiety of external threats reaching home, be it natural or political.
The first movie’s supernatural elements are vague enough to where they can be explained away if need be, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, Villmark 2 is otherworldly. The scattershot set pieces are straight out of a survival-horror video game, and a zombie-like nurse roams the corridors in search of new prey. The other minor antagonists, the hospital’s surviving patients, are eldritch and menacing. The previous movie’s body count was considerably low, yet the sequel’s cast is winnowed down in a more systematic manner.
Because of their grimy appearances and woodsy settings, Villmark is likened to The Blair Witch Project. However, their resemblance is only accurate when acknowledging the films’ surface aspects. Øie’s first movie is an ecological slasher elevated by its nuanced theme; people fail to control or understand nature. Meanwhile, Villmark 2 is unfairly disregarded as a Session 9 copycat on account of their setups. A closer watch reveals the sequel is a more intense study of environmental and medical horrors in relation to Germany’s occupation of Norway.
While the two Villmark films are stylistically disparate, they convey the same messages, albeit one more subtle than the other. The original is a pensive and disquieting mystery where the horror slowly unfolds. Its polished, bloodier follow-up skips the arthouse appeal altogether. One movie can certainly be watched without the other, but this duology is more intriguing as a whole.
