Folk Horror Festival Part 5 – Northern Nightmares

Time for another episode of my ongoing trawl through Severin’s expansive folk horror boxed set All the Haunts Be Ours. This time, I am going to touch on three films from three different countries, united by locales based in the far north.

Lake of the Dead

Writer Bernhard (Henki Kolstad), his wife Sonja (Bjørg Engh), and a group of their friends head out to a break in a cabin in the woods belonging to the family of one of the group, Liljan (Henny Moan). Liljan is worried – her brother Bjørn (Per Lillo-Stenberg) has been staying out there to train a newly-acquired dog, and has not been in contact, and for the past couple of days she’s had a feeling that he is in danger; she’s had sympathetic attacks of anxiety when Bjørn has been in trouble before.

When they arrive, Bjørn is missing – as is the dog and one of the rifles, so they assume he popped out hunting and resolve to wait at the cabin for him. As they wait Bråten (Øyvind Øyen), the local constable who guided them up to the cabin, tells them a sinister legend about the place – that it was the site of a terrible murder, the perpetrator Gråvik (Leif Sommerstad) dumping the bodies in a nearby lake and drowning himself there. Ever since then it is rumoured that strange currents in the lake drag people down to their deaths, and that the killer’s spirit reaches out to possess those who reside in the cabin.

Matters become more concerning when the gang take a moonlight stroll out to the lake – and find Bjørn’s dog dead, and tracks presumed to be his leading into the lake but not away. Is Bjørn dead – and if he is, was it suicide or murder that took place out by the Lake of the Dead?