Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Brennan Camacho
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
Celia
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
eloisebean
Beginning starts with paper thin characters, and you don't care whether they live or die. Towards the middle there' a nice twist, and it seems promising, and then it completely falls flat after another twist. I don't get it, how do you come up with a good idea that grabs your audience, and then run it by doing nothing with it. The ending turned out to be dull and a mess. And then there was this weird editing choice where you would only see quick flashes of something happening, but you couldn't tell what was happening.
derekjager
So I guess I just didn't "get" LAKE BODOM. Why was it a good idea to go to the isolated site where a group of campers were massacred in the 1960s? To "recreate it"? And if there was an active psycho back then, he'd be in his 70s now...or early 80s? This film just seemed to lurch from one "surprise" to another and instead of show don't tell, the characters sat in the car and explained at great length why they did what they did. I thought the acting was fine, but the character's motivations seemed wildly out of sync with what they were reacting to. And no fault of the filmmakers, but the subtitles (yes, it's subtitled) are pretty bad. What's also interesting is that while the critics love it at RT, with a current score of 100% from 6 critics, audiences only give it a 38%. I'm one of those who is fine with "movie logic" but if you're going to have your psycho appear at the end, he needs some kind of explanation or we're to believe that for no reason whatsoever he hangs out in the woods for 50+ years...just hanging out?
Stu Robinson
This film (in Finnish with English subtitles) riffs off a real-life unsolved crime in 1960, in which two teenage couples were stabbed and bludgeoned during the night while camping by Lake Bodom, near Espoo, Finland. Three of the four were killed, the fourth injured severely.In the movie, directed by Taneli Mustonen, another set of teens – two girls and two guys – camp at the site where the 1960 incident took place. The guys ostensibly want to re-enact the crime to test a theory. To lure the girls into coming along, the guys tell them they're going go a party at a lakeside cabin. The girls play along but have their own agendas.It's never clear that the characters are two couples. Elias (Mikael Gabriel) and Nora (Mimosa Willamo) swim together in their underwear and then retreat to the tent, but the film is ambiguous about what, if any, shenanigans take place therein. Ida (Nelly Hirst-Gee) and Atte (Santeri Helinheimo Mäntylä) hang out by the campfire until they decide it's safe to join their friends in the tent – that Elias and Nora probably are done doing whatever they were doing.But if that last point implies that Elias and Nora were fooling around, one might expect them to die first, according to convention for slasher films. Instead, socially awkward Atte is the first to go, stabbed from behind while poking his head into the tent to speak with Ida, who can't see the attacker.Elias is the alpha male, a heavily tattooed, Polynesian-looking guy who seems out of place in rural Finland. Atte is a geek, a long-haired guy with self-esteem issues. Ida is a stunning blonde trying to emerge from a dark period in her past, her face masked in sadness. Her friend Nora is wild, tomboyish brunette.Like many Scandinavian films, Lake Bodem is visually dark and austere. The production quality is professional, and there is some interesting camera work.As the various teens' agendas emerge, the plot takes a number of surprising twists, perhaps too many. I found the conclusion to be muddled, with little explanation or motive.Variety reported in February that the AMC Networks-backed genre streaming service Shudder had picked up the rights to Lake Bodom and would start streaming it in May 2017.###Stu Robinson does writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.
ihaveseenitall
A film based on a true story that can be told in two sentences, and the plot isn't actually even that much based on it. Basically it's a Finnish "slasher" film that isn't scary in any way.How can that be possible ? In a horror movie the viewer should identify to at least one "victim" character and hope for hes or her (usually her) survival in some way. This movie makes none of the cast feel innocent or likable and twists the plot in so many so unnecessary ways the characters lose all value and become indifferent for the viewer.It feels like the script was just brainstormed together in a single sitting without any work and all focus put into the set, cinematography, sound and music which are all state of art. In some scenes the actors do fine job but very bad in few - losing completely the credibility of the ongoing -panic- situation, although international audiences might not get this. When the movie ends one just feels empty and cheated - it meant nothing and it left nothing to ponder on.These are common faults in modern publicly-funded Finnish cinema where tech, music and cinematography are great but driven with lazy writing and recycled boring cast that appears in about every title. Weren't the soviet days already over ? For those interested in slightly better Finnish slasher horror, Kuutamosonaatti (1988) is something to check out.
