Detour (2009)

Simply Perfect

Beautiful, moving film.

Absolutely Fantastic

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

DETOUR is a dull little Norwegian horror/thriller with a plot that we've seen play out countless times. Sadly it looks cheap and derivative, failing to bring out the isolated beauty of the forested Norwegian locations. In addition, it's a film set at night that takes place in pitch black conditions almost all the way through, so that it's all but impossible to make out what's supposed to be going on.The set-up is intensely predictable: a young and carefree couple are driving through an isolated location and come into contact with the creepy locals. Bizarrely, there's a voyeur who has dotted video cameras around the locations so that he can spy on what's going on, like that angle hasn't been covered before. After a while the film turns into the usual woman-in-peril type thriller, with far too many false scares, random sub-plots that add nothing but pad out the running time, and virtually nothing in the way of real horror or fear.I'm glad that the makers of DETOUR never descended into the fully-fledged arena of torture porn but at the same time there's nothing here to enjoy either. The thumping death metal soundtrack is headache-inducing, the camera-work is muddled and poor, and there's no characterisation so that you're never involved in the proceedings. I like Scandinavian cinema as a rule, but DETOUR is a real chore to sit through.

It's actually harder finding this movie with its English title (Detour), then finding the hiding place of Santa Clause. Seriously though, this little slasher movie is pretty decent. It's straight from beginning to finish and delivers on its premise. Of course you have to suspend your disbelieve here and there, but then again there's almost no movie out there, who doesn't ask that from you.What I liked, was the fact, that it stayed true to its premise and was mean and lean. Not too much and not too little. You know what you are letting yourself into, when you rent/watch this movie. It's low budget and has quite a few flaws of course. It's up to you, if you like those movies or not ... if you do, give it a try!

Snarvein is a new horror movie that also includes the Wilhelm scream. The Wilhelm Scream was created by Sheb Wooley in 1951. Sheb Wooley was an actor that played the character Pete in Rawhide. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino use the wilhelm scream all the time in their movies. Other movies that have the Wilhelm Scream are Under the Tuscan Sun, Date Movie, Willow, Texas, Bolt, Dragonball evolution, Tooth Fairy, Once Upon A Time in Mexico, Street Fighter, Star Trek the Motion Picture, Over Her Dead Body, Wrong Turn 3 left for Dead, The Mist, Flushed Away, History of the World Part 1, Meet the Spartans, Watchmen, Time Machine, Howard the Duck and The Green Berets. Plo keywords, Horror, Wilhelm Sercream thriller.

Scandinavia is a flourishing horror movie region lately. I can easily name multiple world-widely acclaimed titles to backup this statement, like "Cold Prey", "Let the Right one in", "Dead Snow", "The Substitute" and "Antichrist". As a devoted horror geek, I want to follow and remain au courant of this contemporary genre boom and thus blindly selected "Detour" as one of the titles I wanted to watch at this year's edition of the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Films. Well … "Detour" was quite a surprise, indeed. I was literally astonished – shocked, even – about how ordinary, dull and derivative this movie was! Think the most rudimentary and clichéd backwoods/survival imaginable and you pretty much fully covered the idea of "Detour". We're talking clichéd story lines, one-dimensional characters, predictable twists, uninspired gore, lame attempts to imitate genre classics and ineffective suspense. Young couple intend to cross the rural Swedish/Norwegian border with a trunk full of illegally smuggled booze, but are forced to make a detour when the main road is closed off because of an accident. They subsequently get two flat tires, run into a deranged garage owner who watches nasty videos, meet a friendly cop who clearly cannot be trusted, pick up a confused girl in the woods and arrive at a secluded mansion owned by a mysteriously elderly couple. Lina and Martin also don't realize they're constantly being filmed by a series of strategically placed cameras all over the woods. They unwarily ended up in the middle of a snuff movie as the involuntarily lead actor and actress. "Detour" is an incredibly short movie (barely 77 minutes) and yet manages to be quite boring and repetitive. The amount of false scares and obviously transparent red herrings is enormous and the pacing is too often interrupted by dreadful dialogs and pointless sentimental moments. The gore-factor and body count are intolerable low and even the breathtaking northeastern Norwegian forestry filming locations can't hold your attention longer than ten minutes. The soundtrack is pretty cool (Norwegian black metal) and the lead actress Marte Cristensen is a beautiful lady, but "Detour" is an overall unremarkable film and not worthy to rank between the aforementioned Scandinavian winners.