Cold Prey (2006-2010) A Rare Nordic slasher Trilogy gets its due

The country most people associate with the idea of a horror franchise is America. The UK has a few, as do Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand, but the notion of anyone competing with the USA on franchising is laughable. Which is why the existence of a Norwegian slasher trilogy isn’t just an outlier — Cold Prey is an anomaly. Directed across three movies by Roar Uthaug, Mats Stenberg, and Mikkel Brænne Sandemose, the series now has a brand‑new, flashy Blu‑ray box set courtesy of Second Sight Films. As usual for them, it’s packed with new extras, short films, writing, and interviews in a concentrated effort to make this the definitive release for fans — the exact treatment they’ve given so many other titles before.

Fritt vilt, to give it its endonym, arrived in 2006 from Roar Uthaug (Tomb Raider, Troll and Troll 2). It set out a uniquely Scandinavian entrant into the slash‑and‑stab canon at a time when the subgenre wasn’t exactly thriving. 2006 was dominated by limp remakes, Saw and Final Destination sequels, and the birth of Hatchet over in America. That context plays a significant role in why both Cold Prey and Hatchet are still held in esteem today.

Cold Prey begins with a group — two couples (including Ingrid Bolsø Berdal’s Jannicke) and their tag‑along single friend — heading into a nearby mountain range to snowboard somewhere free of tourists, where they can shred powder in peace. Almost inevitably, one of them has an accident attempting a backflip with insufficient air and breaks their leg. Miles from anywhere, they’re forced to seek shelter for the night, and as luck would have it, they stumble upon an abandoned hotel. What follows is innocuous for a while as the group make sure Morten (Rolf Kristian Larsen) is coping with his injury; Eirik (Tomas Alf Larsen) keeps a certain distance from his girlfriend, Jannicke, while trying to assert himself as the dominant hunter‑gatherer type; and the amorous Mikal (Endre Martin Midtstigen) and Ingunn (Viktoria Winge) look for any excuse to break away from the group for some privacy. Sitting firmly within the more patient end of the slasher canon, it’s a while before the mountain man appears and begins his campaign of violence.

It’s nice that Uthaug displays that level of patience, as it allows the movie the freedom to characterise the main players and the hotel too. Time and space establish an atmosphere within the burned‑out walls, 1970s stylings, and overall grim aura, making the building haunting even without an immediate threat. Equally important is the slow build of anxiety over who may or may not be sharing the hotel with them through neat environmental storytelling — after all, this isn’t the sort of slasher that has a tired cold open like so many 80s examples did. And then the mountain man turns up, and credit to Uthaug: he doesn’t reveal his monster in its entirety until our eyes and ears, Jannicke, first sees him.

When the mountain man finally arrives, he isn’t a supernatural entity with an easily marketable design, even if he does have a [Jason] Voorheesian strength. He’s more of a hunter, picking off his game one by one with tricksy strategies. There’s a degree of realism at play, part of a burgeoning trend around the time of Cold Prey’s release. He also has that dog in him: the first death carries a real sense of cruelty; the second is spontaneous; the third is an idiotic escape attempt straight into a bear trap; and the last is savage and inhumane. Even the way he disposes of bodies, dumping them into a nearby crack in the ice, serves as a peak to that harsh, grounded streak.

COLD PREY TRILOGY IS OUT NOW ON SECOND SIGHT FILMS BLU-RAY, CLICK THE BOX AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE

The first Cold Prey is no classic, but it has a classic feel that’s uniquely Scandinavian thanks to its extreme conditions. I may be exposing myself as having simple taste, but horror in the snow is one of my easy buttons, so while it’s far from a classic (slashers have few genuine examples of those), it is very satisfying. Cold Prey II — directed by Mats Stenberg — picks up moments after the credits roll. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal reprises her role as Jannicke, who is found by the side of an arctic road, worse for wear, and taken to a hospital, leading us to a very clear reference to 1981’s Halloween II. This sequel also feels more like a classically inclined slasher follow‑up, beyond the Halloween nod, with its confined location and the grizzly nature of the kill sequences.

Cold Prey II gets to business much quicker. It actually explains who the mountain man is, expanding on the fleeting hints about a missing child, while never going so far as to explain why he becomes an aberrant killing machine — even the third doesn’t really manage that, beyond stating that his surrogate father was beastly. It also gives him the quasi‑supernatural ability so many slasher villains possess: the inability to stay dead. Yes, he is defeated at the climax of the first movie, but I’m not going to explain how. However, his body, along with the bodies of Jannicke’s friends, are recovered and taken to a hospital facility late at night — and you know what happens next…

The slasher pedigree of Cold Prey II is much stronger, operating on the promise of viscerality rather than the first’s atmospheric menace. The hospital is manned by a skeleton crew, and when the mountain man reawakens he sets his sights on killing everyone — not, as in many slashers, fixating on the survivor of the previous entry. He wants everyone dead. The cruelty returns too, this time with the budget to actually show it rather than cutting away at the pivotal moment, and the movie delivers its own iconic death scene when the one character who could feasibly match him in strength has his neck pulled back over on itself and snapped. I’m sure Jason did something similar in a Friday the 13th sequel, but here it feels like a genuine sequence of intent. There is also the suggestion of intelligence, particularly in a sequence involving armed police, showcasing that he’s more than pure strength and malevolence. It’s a pity that the third entry falls into the classic horror trope of heading back to the origins, because the second has many of the building blocks to make him a Scandinavian slasher icon for years to come.

Nonetheless, Cold Prey II is the strongest of the bunch as an exercise in pure horror venom, using its location with brutal pragmatism and employing a level of cinematography the first couldn’t manage due to its meagre budget. Absolutely everything is upped here, from scale to threat levels. Unfortunately the third one is by far the worst of the series.

Mikkel Brænne Sandemose takes the helm this time as events head back to the late 70s/early 80s — though not in the way classic slasher fans might expect. The register still shares a lot in common with the prior Cold Prey’s. We see the mountain man’s horrible upbringing, and as bad as it is, it never really makes a solid case for why this kid grew up to be a murderous maniac living in an abandoned hotel. It feels like a leap too far, too autonomous to function as a fulfilling “character” arc. After his childhood, we jump forward a number of years to another young group of friends, this time camping in the woods in summer — which moves a little too far away from the idea of “cold” prey for my liking. We spend a little time with the group before one of them falls into a spiked pit set up by the much younger mountain man, before he has found his mountain. The loner who takes him in as a child is shocked to discover he’s treating the first victim like a wild animal; he begs him to sort things out — which the mountain man interprets as “kill them all,” or perhaps he simply decides to kill them all anyway regardless of the prompt. We never really see any rational motivation. The kills this time are much more hunting‑based — arrows, traps, brute strength — and just 48 hours after watching it, not one of them lingers in the memory. A sin for a slasher if ever there was one.

And that’s it, really. Cold Prey III is the sort of unremarkable movie the first two felt like a Norwegian antidote to — a bog‑standard slasher in the woods, only everyone here is speaking Norse. While fine at what it does, the first two felt like they were trying to offer a unique geographical iteration on a sub‑genre that had been unduly left behind, and they genuinely felt like they had the potential to lead to a good, strong‑blooded franchise. This is especially bothersome when you consider that in the following decade or two, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway have shown a devilish ability to tell dark stories with serial murder as their centre. Cold Prey had the potential to be a key forebearer to that scene, and the third one feels like it simply tapped out.

The third movie’s drop‑off is disappointing, but hardly rare in horror — it just arrives sooner than it should’ve. Even so, the ideas powering the first two, along with the extensive interviews, behind‑the‑scenes features, and supplementary material, make this set more than worth the time for horror faithful. In a rough era for the genre, Cold Prey mattered — and this boxset release makes a strong case for why.

ROB’S ARCHIVE – COLD PREY TRILOGY