Father Son Holy Gore

Fritt Vilt III (English title: Cold Prey 3). 2010. Dir. Mikkel Braenne Sandemose. Screenplay by Peder Fuglerud & Lars Gudmestad; story by Martin Sundland.
Starring Ida Marie Bakkerud, Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen, Pål Stokka, Arthur Berning, Sturla Rui, Terje Ranes, and Nils Johnson. T2 Entertainment.
Not Rated. 95 minutes.
Horror

★★★★

I’m in the the tiny little column of people who loved all three of these Fritt Vilt films. One of the best slasher trilogies out there, and it’s certainly one of the best slashers in modern horror. While a lot of horror fans seem to have dismissed these movies, I champion them. If you’ve yet to read my reviews, here are Fritt Vilt and Fritt Vilt II – and certainly if you haven’t watched those yet don’t go into this one. I’m sure most people sensibly would watch the trilogy in order, but just in case, turn back, and make sure you get a look at the lead up. Though this is a prequel film, Fritt Vilt III does rely on some of our knowledge of what came before cinematically in order for us to fully realize the chronology. Even further, it cements these three movies as a really great series with a memorable killer at the center.

This movie opens in 1976 at the mountain hotel where the original Fritt Vilt was set – we get slightly expository scenes filling in the killer’s background. His mother Sigrid and stepfather Gunnar claim he went missing, which takes us back to the very first film. It’s clear now that when we originally saw the boy running through the snow in Fritt Vilt, he may have been running from someone close to him. Gunnar does not like his wife’s son. He keeps the boy locked away in the basement. Sigrid tries her best to let the boy stay upstairs, claiming he barely gets any sunlight, but Gunnar thinks he is a freak (remember the boy’s significant birthmark across his face – of course that’s no reason to treat anyone, let alone a child, terribly like this..) and wants him kept hidden. Afterwards, we see Gunnar treating the boy worse than a dog. It’s obvious the boy was either trying to run away from home, or Gunnar might’ve been trying to kill him – we never get a full answer, which is better that way, but the strings are there to lead us on. Then, one night after a few days of the boy being missing, he returns to see his mother. The boy proceeds to kill her, as well as Gunnar. He disappears into thin air, it seems, and nobody sees any of them again.
We also see a subplot concerning a local Sheriff named Einar, involved in the investigation into the disappearance of Sigrid, Gunnar, and the boy. Einar goes to see his brother Jon, who is clearly an outcast and living in a cabin somewhere near the national park around Jotunheimen. There is some sort of rift between them. Einar comes to question Jon about whether or not he’s seen the boy from the hotel; apparently Jon’s cabin is one of the only places between the hotel and civilization. Jon declines to say much, leading his brother to believe he’s not seen the boy. However, once Einar leaves, Jon can be seen holding up a picture of the boy with his mother and stepfather; around the edges are bloody, smudged fingerprints.
Cut to 12 years later. 1988. A group of friends are heading into the national park near Jotunheimen in search of the area, which has apparently been taken off the map, where the hotel lies abandoned in the mountains. Einar is dropping the group off and returning the next afternoon to bring them back out from the park..
On the way, Einar runs across his brother Jon; they have an awkward, one-way conversation, and the sheriff warns his brother, who has a rifle in the back of his truck, there is no hunting within the national park. They head off on their way, and Einar drops the friends in the park. They set out and eventually find the hotel, but it’s filthy and worn down, so a few of the group would rather not stay, and instead opt to find somewhere better to camp. After this decision, they fall prey to the boy, now 12 years older and closer to being a man, who has been roaming the woods for over a decade and honing his dangerous, brutal skills.
One of the defining things about the entire trilogy is the brutality of the kills. It doesn’t stop at the first sequel – Fritt Vilt III really keeps up the pace in terms of savagery in the slasher’s kills. The very first death in the movie is really great because it sets up part of the themes throughout the whole thing.

For instance, the first death comes as a result of a situation that could easily be an accident anyone might come across in the deep woods where people hunt and poach, if they aren’t careful anyways. Two of the characters slip into a pitfall, most likely created by the sheriff’s brother Jon; one is skewered by a pointed stick in the pit, the other gets out to try and locate help. After she leaves, the other character is left to be found by the killer – as if the fall into the pit wasn’t bad enough, the killer then viciously finishes him off. From there, we see how the killer has grown, gotten very angry, and learned a lot about hunting – mostly just the killing part. This then leads to proof Jon has been helping and sheltering the killer. When the big slasher hauls his prey back to the cabin, Jon also finds the escaped girl and brings her back – he scolds the now grown boy saying these people are “humans… not animals”. It now becomes very clear the killer’s earlier abuse took the heaviest toll possible; his humanity, any empathy or sympathy possible inside him, was taken away from him completely. He can’t distinguish man from all the other animals, or worse, he was abused into believing/knowing man to be the most dangerous animal of all. So, just like Michael Myers’ famous head-tilt in Halloween (when he pins the one teenager up against the wall dead & stands back with his head tilted to the side just like a dog while admiring his work), this scene truly cements the Fritt Vilt killer as an animal of a man.
The kills follow a pattern in that they reflect the killer’s life out in the woods, fending for himself and trying to stay alive. Obviously Jon taught him to hunt in order to survive, eat, et cetera, but because of the boy’s awful home life in his very formative years this training and experience lead to his being a serial killer, and not just an avid, experienced hunter. Instead of all knife-slashings and the like, we’re treated to bow and arrows, rifles, and just downright savagery at times. It’s pretty incredible. We go into slashers looking for this sort of thing – don’t be surprised when you’ve found it.
Another thing I really love about this entry is the fact it takes most of the action from out of the shadowy corridors of the abandoned mountain hotel and the second entry’s dark hospital hallways, and it puts a lot of the scenes in a brighter, more visible landscape. This works well because the first kill itself [the pitfall scene] is shrouded in a lot of darkness. From this scene, things move outwards into the light. There’s something scarier about a slasher film when it can work in the light of day versus needing the shadows to make things tense. When a slasher has many scenes shot in the daytime, it subverts our normal image of the slasher movies we know best, and also catches us off guard – in a good way.
A couple great moments in this regards:
– I really like a few moments where we’re seeing shots of a character intercut with looks through the sight of his rifle. This provides some nice suspense; things become full of tension, as we literally look down the barrel of his gun. What makes these bits really scary is the killer lurks in the forest. Yet it’s completely light out. While the character is holding a gun, waiting for the moment to fire, we still believe the killer will get him – he doesn’t need to the darkness, he can hide in plain sight. It’s unsettling.
– My favourite scene is actually later in the film when Anders and Hedda are near a sort of cave, which sits next to a pool of water. Anders has been shot through the shoulder (when the bow and arrows make an appearance). They’re trying to rest, but the killer can be heard coming in the trees. Instead of running, Hedda hides. When the killer comes and circles Anders, just like an animal would its prey, Hedda comes out and stabs the killer – this doesn’t phase him and he keeps coming. Then Anders smashes his head with a rock. They leave the killer floating face down in the pool of water. This leads to one of my top creepy shots in the whole trilogy – the killer raises up from the water, his head down, his hood up and covering his face – he gasps hard for air making a terrible noise. It really is a great scene, which gives the characters a little win while also showing us just how much longevity the killer has, and how he is damn tough.
I also can’t forget to the mention the cinematography here is absolutely incredible. The locations here were very well chosen. There are some abnormally beautiful shots in the film, which is very atypical of a slasher (for the most part – there are definitely some great looking visuals in slashers out there). One of my favourite parts about this final installment in the trilogy.
I can’t help but give this third film in the series a 4 out of 5 rating.  There were issues with pacing in the beginning, but about halfway through the movie’s running time things pick up, and it really starts to cook with gas going forward.
A lot of people say the prequel by nature has a tough time keeping suspense up in terms of us wondering who will live or die because we already know, going in, the killer clearly will be around for years and years – the first Fritt Vilt is set probably almost two decades after the events of this film. So we know at the start the killer won’t be stopped. However, the movie gives us a lot of interesting insight into the killer. It helps us fill out the back story instead of leaving him as a masked and nameless slasher. This may work for a lot of movies out there – or maybe it doesn’t work, they just keep getting people to fund their useless sequels. On the other hand, Fritt Vilt creates a really excellent story, and the icing on the big cake that is that story comes with this third installment in the series. Giving us a fuller background on the killer makes the whole trilogy better, in my opinion. Not only that, Fritt Vilt III on its own really has a lot of great themes in it – man as animal, man as hunter, et cetera. The deaths are nasty, the plot is grim, and it really shows us how the killer of the series became what he was in the first Fritt Vilt. This was a great slasher and really did justice to the other films. Sadly, not many appear to agree. I couldn’t care less.
I love this, I watch it often, and I’m confident in putting the whole trilogy up as one of the best horror series’ out there while being at the top of my list when it comes to the greatest slasher trilogies ever made.
Check out the whole trilogy – have some fun!