Horror film in Sweden is so rare you can’t call it a genre. From time to time something appears - and the chance of a fiasco is 99.9 %. I’ve of course seen it all, I can’t step away from the horrors of Swedish horror - and I’ve actually committed one or two crimes myself in the genre. But enough about that and instead focus on 2010’s Insane, which came and disappeared quickly. Which is a pity, because it’s probably the most entertaining slasher to have been made in Sweden - if you not count Mats Helge’s Blood Tracks. Nothing is more entertaining than a group of glam rockers stuck in the mountains together with a band of inbreeds.
In Insane we meet David (Lars Bethke) who runs a lonely motel somewhere in the woods. He takes care of the guests and cooks food...he do everything. Including maybe murdering them also! A few days after a woman disappears from the motel, her sister shows up and starts to make her own investigation. But something is not alright, and soon she finds out that there’s a madman running around, dressed in a black rain coat and a gas mask… and a long, sharp knife.
While the story is nothing special - it’s actually more or less a rip-off of Psycho, including a couple of the twists and turns - it’s probably the only Swedish horror film that tries to be a commercial, sellable product! It feels a lot like a late 80’s slasher, including the nice score by Göran Florén and the colorful sets. I like how a certain pattern is reoccuring during the whole movie, pre- and post-credits, which makes a nice visual frame to the story. The location, a real motel not in use, looks great and gives a lot of production value to the movie.
It’s not bad at all actually and the directors, Anders Jacobsson and Tomas Sandquist, does a good job building up suspense, setting up cool murder set-pieces and creating an atmosphere which feels more American can Blood Tracks could have wished for! It’s a slick production. It was also gorier than I remember it to be, even if most of the kills happens directly off-screen and we only see the bloody aftermath or sharp objects sticking out from human flesh. But there’s a nice head crush and a few other gory details to look forward to.
How about the acting then? It’s not bad. The movie is partly dubbed by actors fluent in English - and everyone, what I can hear, speaks fluent English without Swedish accent, which is extra fun when people (= swedish fanboys) complains about the accents! ;) It’s like Sandy Mansson, who plays a nurse in Camp Slaughter and in one review got criticized for her Swedish accent. The thing is of course that Sandy is 100 % American. People always find things to complain about. While I think Bethke is good, David Lenneman is even better. He’s the most relaxed and laid-back actors of the bunch and does a fine job with the sometimes stilted dialogue. Lenneman’s other claim to genre-fame is as the character “Update” in John Carl Buechler’s 2003’s The Thing/Alien rip-off Deep Freeze.
Looking at it again I think it’s a decent, very good-looking slasher, shot for very little money. The effects are gory and graphic, the score is good, the acting decent. The directing is great...that leaves us with the script. I don’t mind the Psycho-esque ripoff-ish story but the last half of the movie feels a bit fragmented, like it looses the touch with the story line. There’s two kills I really don’t understand involving characters that has no need to be in the movie. But that’s nothing really, we’re talking a slasher movie here, exploitation. Entertainment. And that’s what Insane came to the world to give us, the power of not being bored. It’s out on DVD in Sweden and on blu-ray in Germany, both looking excellent. What I’ve heard the German blu-ray has an earlier, slightly different cut of the movie also - but it was so long since I saw the Swedish DVD so I can’t compare and tell the difference.
If you find it, buy it and support the indies.
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