A very well photographed Swedish horror fiasco, it features a creative range of camera angles and some wonderful camera movement, which keeps the film interesting on a visual level. Other than the camera-work, it is not at all extraordinary stuff. It has a formulaic story, a messy plot and run-of-the-mill characters. The acting is not much either, and is a bit overdone by some of the cast members. Just because it is Swedish does not make any difference - the film is still as trite as today's horror flicks from Hollywood that are marketed at the younger generation. However, the work of the cinematographer keeps the film from drowning.
10 Reviews
Generic Hollywood teen slasher... in Swedish
niz13 March 2005
Yet another generic Hollywood teen-slasher with lots of attractive kids getting picked off at a boarding school... except its not a Hollywood slasher, its Swedish! Of course its fun to see this kind of genre film coming out of Scandinavia, but its less fun when its simply aping Kevin Williamson films and borrowing heavily from Friday the 13th (the "lake" motif et al). Any unique Swedish identity is lost as it slavishly follows all the standard clichés of the genre: lots of confusing back-story to uncover, difficult-to-distinguish characters who exist solely to get killed etc etc.
Its disappointing that Swedish genre cinema has regressed to this after the awesome high-point of 2002's DEN OSYNLIGE, which similarly dealt with ghosts and teen murder but in a brilliantly original, fantastically entertaining manner that did not feel the need to follow any established genre rules or conventions. THE DROWNING GHOST's "by-the-book" cookie cutter approach ultimately means it will be ignored by any potential international audience in favour of identical Hollywood teen slashers, simply because they happen to be in English.
Its disappointing that Swedish genre cinema has regressed to this after the awesome high-point of 2002's DEN OSYNLIGE, which similarly dealt with ghosts and teen murder but in a brilliantly original, fantastically entertaining manner that did not feel the need to follow any established genre rules or conventions. THE DROWNING GHOST's "by-the-book" cookie cutter approach ultimately means it will be ignored by any potential international audience in favour of identical Hollywood teen slashers, simply because they happen to be in English.
Swedish Conventional Slash Movie
claudio_carvalho6 May 2006
The traditional Hellestad Boarding School is celebrating its centenary, and the students are planning a big party. However, there is a dark legend about a brutal murder of three students by a local farm a hundred years ago. The killer drowned in a lake nearby and his body has been not found. One year ago, the disturbed intern Rebecka (Sasa Bjurling) committed suicide during the anniversary speech of the arrogant dean, and her deranged father escaped from the mental institution where he was lodged. The student Sara (Rebecka Hence) is preparing a composition about the tragic legend, and finds new evidences compromising the name of a traditional local family and top contributor of Hellestad. Meanwhile, two new arrivals, Leo (Peter Eggers) and Felix (Jesper Salén), become close to Sara and her roommate Therese (Jenny Ulving), and students and staffs are vanishing in the place.
My expectation with "Strandvaskaren" were the highest possible, based on the name of director Mikael Håfström. His cruel "Ondskan" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338309/usercomments-45) is a stunning movie; indeed, it is a psychological study of violence taking place also in a boarding school. Unfortunately, the disappointing "Strandvaskaren" is nothing but a conventional slash movie, with no originality, and using the same clichés of many American productions. Anyway, I like this type of predictable movie as entertainment and my vote is six.
Tiotle (Brazil): "A Maldição do Lago" ("The Curse of the Lake")
My expectation with "Strandvaskaren" were the highest possible, based on the name of director Mikael Håfström. His cruel "Ondskan" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338309/usercomments-45) is a stunning movie; indeed, it is a psychological study of violence taking place also in a boarding school. Unfortunately, the disappointing "Strandvaskaren" is nothing but a conventional slash movie, with no originality, and using the same clichés of many American productions. Anyway, I like this type of predictable movie as entertainment and my vote is six.
Tiotle (Brazil): "A Maldição do Lago" ("The Curse of the Lake")
One of few Swedish horror flicks...
Chris_The_Wise1 February 2005
Strandvaskaren is one of the very few Swedish horror movies in existence, this does not make it good in any way. The potential of the movie is fairly good. Old ghoulish folklore can always be used to create a great horror flick, but the director has made some incredible faults.
The sounds is bad... The effects are cheesy and bad at best. When a knife cuts someone it usually has blood on it? LOL.
The actors does an okay job with a quite bad script. So I really don't have any heavy complaints there.
But still its fun to see a Swedish horror movie, I hope that more will be done but this movie was a complete waste of time. I gave it 3/10 and consider it to be almost a to high number.
The sounds is bad... The effects are cheesy and bad at best. When a knife cuts someone it usually has blood on it? LOL.
The actors does an okay job with a quite bad script. So I really don't have any heavy complaints there.
But still its fun to see a Swedish horror movie, I hope that more will be done but this movie was a complete waste of time. I gave it 3/10 and consider it to be almost a to high number.
Just sit right back and watch it drown.
lost-in-limbo14 March 2006
A student doing an essay on her boarding school's dark past, where three students where killed and the murderer was found dead in the lake over 100 years ago. Discovers a horrifically dark secret behind these murders and that off a recent suicide. The problem is that secret can have some big consequences on that of a respected student and his father who provides beneficial benefits to the school. While, Sarah is digging further into this mystery there's a killer on the loose knocking off people. During the hundredth anniversary of the murders a party is organised, but this night is when Sarah comes face to face with the killer.
When I got to the ending credits I thought what a big waste of time I spent on this very lukewarm Swedish slasher. Other than the freely defined camera-work and glaringly grand location, nothing else hugely appeals or breaks any new ground. Simply it looks great, there's no denying that, but its has to have more then strong polished visuals to back it up with because it doesn't go anywhere that we haven't been before and the tangled up story aimlessly plods about. If you going make a slasher with a plot structure that we've seen over and over again, you might as well go out of your way to provide the big draw cards, instead it decided to wimp out and come up with a rather mercifully plain offering. The story is very familiar that it's just simply worn out in its supposed twists and it doesn't provide much in a way of suspense, so hopefully you would ask for some blood and T&A then, well sorry it cops out on those factors too.
So what does it have going for it then! Well, actually the haunting opening scene with its pulsating score (that crops up at times) makes a better impression than it deserves. The performances are fine, if a little glum, although the characters are your standard stereotypes waiting for their chance to be killed off. Like I said the film's features are attractively glossed up. But in the things that mainly count in these films, all of that falls vapid. Please! Just add something in once in a while to make me sit up and pay notice in this drawn out fodder, because nothing, that is NOTHING (ah other then camera-work and location setting) is formidable and remotely enticing about what's happening. The deaths are incredibly lacklustre with most of it happening off the screen and when we did see one all we get was a puddle of blood in the most basic knockoff. Where was the atmosphere? Sadly with the countryside location and that of gloomy boarding school that has many poorly lit rooms, there was nothing generated to get your skin crawling and that's a sorely missed opportunity.
The screenplay is handled in a wilted manner and the script tediously strings along its muddled back-story and the coincidences that make headway are all a bit too convenient. When things start to unravel you can't stop thinking of why didn't this come sooner, as pointless scenes cement themselves and the whole mystery becomes increasingly ragged with bits and pieces from other slasher flicks that aren't hard to pick up on. When it came to the sudden climax.. it had me thinking "was that it"!? Also the final scene was a bit puzzling in what it was trying to accomplish with the suggestion. The concept could've used some blatant energy to help with the stalk and slash moments too. Hence you know you're in for a jagged time when the murder scenes are even more boring than what's happening in between them.
The film's production is well made and it might be a highly unoriginal slasher, but what killed it for me was that is was so dead flat and tame in its execution that it just moulders away without much of a spark.
When I got to the ending credits I thought what a big waste of time I spent on this very lukewarm Swedish slasher. Other than the freely defined camera-work and glaringly grand location, nothing else hugely appeals or breaks any new ground. Simply it looks great, there's no denying that, but its has to have more then strong polished visuals to back it up with because it doesn't go anywhere that we haven't been before and the tangled up story aimlessly plods about. If you going make a slasher with a plot structure that we've seen over and over again, you might as well go out of your way to provide the big draw cards, instead it decided to wimp out and come up with a rather mercifully plain offering. The story is very familiar that it's just simply worn out in its supposed twists and it doesn't provide much in a way of suspense, so hopefully you would ask for some blood and T&A then, well sorry it cops out on those factors too.
So what does it have going for it then! Well, actually the haunting opening scene with its pulsating score (that crops up at times) makes a better impression than it deserves. The performances are fine, if a little glum, although the characters are your standard stereotypes waiting for their chance to be killed off. Like I said the film's features are attractively glossed up. But in the things that mainly count in these films, all of that falls vapid. Please! Just add something in once in a while to make me sit up and pay notice in this drawn out fodder, because nothing, that is NOTHING (ah other then camera-work and location setting) is formidable and remotely enticing about what's happening. The deaths are incredibly lacklustre with most of it happening off the screen and when we did see one all we get was a puddle of blood in the most basic knockoff. Where was the atmosphere? Sadly with the countryside location and that of gloomy boarding school that has many poorly lit rooms, there was nothing generated to get your skin crawling and that's a sorely missed opportunity.
The screenplay is handled in a wilted manner and the script tediously strings along its muddled back-story and the coincidences that make headway are all a bit too convenient. When things start to unravel you can't stop thinking of why didn't this come sooner, as pointless scenes cement themselves and the whole mystery becomes increasingly ragged with bits and pieces from other slasher flicks that aren't hard to pick up on. When it came to the sudden climax.. it had me thinking "was that it"!? Also the final scene was a bit puzzling in what it was trying to accomplish with the suggestion. The concept could've used some blatant energy to help with the stalk and slash moments too. Hence you know you're in for a jagged time when the murder scenes are even more boring than what's happening in between them.
The film's production is well made and it might be a highly unoriginal slasher, but what killed it for me was that is was so dead flat and tame in its execution that it just moulders away without much of a spark.
A poor first try.
Be Nice18 March 2005
Warning: Spoilers
This is the first or at least one of the first "teen hack" productions from Sweden.
I've seen a lot of the usual teen hack Hollywood productions such as "Scream" one to three. It is not my favorite kind of genre, I admit to that. The Hollywood productions mostly seems to handle this type of genre well enough. The scripting of these movies are quite good, the acting is often good and the movie elements are quite often timed well enough to create a fairly intense and scary atmosphere. So here we are with the first Swedish production of a teen hack movie.
How did it fare you wonder? As you might expect, quite bad, I believe anyways. The story is average, early planting a myth of a ghostly killer on a path of revenge. The acting is quite good actually with a lot of the Swedish young "elite" in the acting ensemble. They perform well I think so a big + to them. The "planting" (the element you plant early in a scene to make the viewer slightly aware that something is awry thereby increasing the tension in the movie and later reap the benefits by creating a scary finish) is terrible.
*SPOILER* The first example of this is when a student early in the movie talks to the porter of the school wanting his cell -phone and some stuff from the basement. The student heads down the basement... The killer of the movie now grabs the keys to the basement door. Unnecessary... You already know that this kid is "gonna get it". This kind of planting is not needed at all. And examples like this seems to be "haunting" this movie all the way through.
Anyways... Sweden's got a bobsleigh team...
I've seen a lot of the usual teen hack Hollywood productions such as "Scream" one to three. It is not my favorite kind of genre, I admit to that. The Hollywood productions mostly seems to handle this type of genre well enough. The scripting of these movies are quite good, the acting is often good and the movie elements are quite often timed well enough to create a fairly intense and scary atmosphere. So here we are with the first Swedish production of a teen hack movie.
How did it fare you wonder? As you might expect, quite bad, I believe anyways. The story is average, early planting a myth of a ghostly killer on a path of revenge. The acting is quite good actually with a lot of the Swedish young "elite" in the acting ensemble. They perform well I think so a big + to them. The "planting" (the element you plant early in a scene to make the viewer slightly aware that something is awry thereby increasing the tension in the movie and later reap the benefits by creating a scary finish) is terrible.
*SPOILER* The first example of this is when a student early in the movie talks to the porter of the school wanting his cell -phone and some stuff from the basement. The student heads down the basement... The killer of the movie now grabs the keys to the basement door. Unnecessary... You already know that this kid is "gonna get it". This kind of planting is not needed at all. And examples like this seems to be "haunting" this movie all the way through.
Anyways... Sweden's got a bobsleigh team...
Well, well...
gothic_a6664 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
From time to time, one cannot fail to run into bitter disappointments that shake one's faith in all sacred things such as trust, hope, and, in this case, good film-making. Excuse me this rant, but from my earlier experience with this director (Mikael Håfström), I was led to expect a remarkable movie experience: perhaps not necessarily anything as brilliant and insightful as Ondskan, but still something out of ordinary, original and tactful, as European movies aspire to be.
All my expectations were flawed, however, completely destroyed and torn to little shreds of contempt. It seems to the movie deliberately sabotaged itself, opting to follow a by now more than exhausted trend of the America-Teen-Slasher which feels ill at ease in a Swedish setting and, in this adaption of what was not a praise-worthy effort to begin it, fail to follow the thriller-by-number with any amount of narrative coherent or scenic competence.
The plot is formulaic: a predictable ensemble of characters set in a prestigious college (the building itself having a great potential for being a new Overlook, but, alas, it is completely wasted in this movie) wrapped up with a "mysterious" murder committed a hundred years ago, a pseudo paranormal demonstration, a suicide and an investigation undertaken by the said characters which, by the way, are nothing but one dimensional personality traits, not even stressed enough to be called clichés, one could say they are underdeveloped ideas.
Of course, plot twists abound, none of them strike as fresh or even as surprising. Half-ways through, the movie takes a turn and tries to explore some psychological drama, which makes the final work even more flawed and utterly clueless.
*****Mild Spoilers*****
It should be stressed that nothing rings original in this mess. The ending is so reminiscent of Friday the 13th that it is nothing short of uncanny, a previous scene is a watered down version of something straight out of Seven, and I am quite sure the list could go on.
Lovers of gore be warned, this movie has none. It is, however, peopled with silly to borderline intelligent characters who believe that staring and trying to reason with an armed murderer is quite a plausible excuse to get themselves killed.
I truly hope that Mikael Håfström will find his way back to brilliance and quit this emulation of American cinema at its worst.
All my expectations were flawed, however, completely destroyed and torn to little shreds of contempt. It seems to the movie deliberately sabotaged itself, opting to follow a by now more than exhausted trend of the America-Teen-Slasher which feels ill at ease in a Swedish setting and, in this adaption of what was not a praise-worthy effort to begin it, fail to follow the thriller-by-number with any amount of narrative coherent or scenic competence.
The plot is formulaic: a predictable ensemble of characters set in a prestigious college (the building itself having a great potential for being a new Overlook, but, alas, it is completely wasted in this movie) wrapped up with a "mysterious" murder committed a hundred years ago, a pseudo paranormal demonstration, a suicide and an investigation undertaken by the said characters which, by the way, are nothing but one dimensional personality traits, not even stressed enough to be called clichés, one could say they are underdeveloped ideas.
Of course, plot twists abound, none of them strike as fresh or even as surprising. Half-ways through, the movie takes a turn and tries to explore some psychological drama, which makes the final work even more flawed and utterly clueless.
*****Mild Spoilers*****
It should be stressed that nothing rings original in this mess. The ending is so reminiscent of Friday the 13th that it is nothing short of uncanny, a previous scene is a watered down version of something straight out of Seven, and I am quite sure the list could go on.
Lovers of gore be warned, this movie has none. It is, however, peopled with silly to borderline intelligent characters who believe that staring and trying to reason with an armed murderer is quite a plausible excuse to get themselves killed.
I truly hope that Mikael Håfström will find his way back to brilliance and quit this emulation of American cinema at its worst.
Orrible
gianmarcoronconi9 May 2022
Film that can only be defined as ugly and with a plot without the slightest sense copied by other films of its kind. The acting is not bad either but the rest is really rubbish and it doesn't make the slightest sense, even when everything is explained in the end you still don't understand anything.
A slasher with brains. Recommended for those who are not that into violence.
insomniac_rod4 July 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Oh come on, this movie ain't bad at all. In fact, it's a slasher flick with an interesting plot, very good acting, a decent score, excellent cinematography, and good direction. Now, where could you find a slasher flick with those characteristics? This one is far better than most American slashers. It has some clichès but it's not as cynical as, for example, "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer", or "Scream".
The main plot situation is believed to be the revenge of the drowning ghost but the main problem really is that someone is taking his identity for unknown reasons. Who is behind the murders? What does Rebecca's suicide have to do with the whole situation? Watch "Drowning Ghost" and witness that it isn't what it looks. It's more than just a simple slasher.
I must admit that the best feature about the movie is the acting. Rebecka Hemse (Sara) delivers a solid performance. She's firm, brave, intelligent, and beautiful. That's my kind of woman! This girl seriously needs more important roles, she has the talents. The rest of the cats also deliver a good performance and do not make fools out of themselves like in many American slashers. Also, the visuals are great. The cinematography really helps to create the movie's atmosphere. This Swedish exteriors are great.
"Drowning Ghost" may not be the best slasher film recently but it's a decent ghost story with slasher tones. I would recommend it for people who are not into violence or gore but still enjoy the slasher formula. This movie will keep you interested for it's plot, beautiful lead character, and some situations that are common in the life of a student.
The main plot situation is believed to be the revenge of the drowning ghost but the main problem really is that someone is taking his identity for unknown reasons. Who is behind the murders? What does Rebecca's suicide have to do with the whole situation? Watch "Drowning Ghost" and witness that it isn't what it looks. It's more than just a simple slasher.
I must admit that the best feature about the movie is the acting. Rebecka Hemse (Sara) delivers a solid performance. She's firm, brave, intelligent, and beautiful. That's my kind of woman! This girl seriously needs more important roles, she has the talents. The rest of the cats also deliver a good performance and do not make fools out of themselves like in many American slashers. Also, the visuals are great. The cinematography really helps to create the movie's atmosphere. This Swedish exteriors are great.
"Drowning Ghost" may not be the best slasher film recently but it's a decent ghost story with slasher tones. I would recommend it for people who are not into violence or gore but still enjoy the slasher formula. This movie will keep you interested for it's plot, beautiful lead character, and some situations that are common in the life of a student.
I thought it was quite good
history_girl15 November 2008
Despite the many bad reviews about this movie, I found it really good.
Sara was a convincing acted character who gets herself involved in a rather deep mystery while researching the murder of three students some 100 years before. Eerily, while she is researching this the more recent suicide of a female student becomes entangled in the mystery.
I thought that all the actors did a good job and the camera work and music was fantastic. I was sitting on the edge of my seat right to the end - I just had to know what happened! I would recommend this for anyone who is not into a lot of blood and gore but wants to watch a movie because it has a good plot and script.
Sara was a convincing acted character who gets herself involved in a rather deep mystery while researching the murder of three students some 100 years before. Eerily, while she is researching this the more recent suicide of a female student becomes entangled in the mystery.
I thought that all the actors did a good job and the camera work and music was fantastic. I was sitting on the edge of my seat right to the end - I just had to know what happened! I would recommend this for anyone who is not into a lot of blood and gore but wants to watch a movie because it has a good plot and script.
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