The attractive but plodding 2019 thriller "Lake of Death" makes its streaming premiere this week on the Shudder streaming platform. It's a better candidate for a platform yet to be created: Shrug.
It's based on a 1942 novel, which redirected homeland audiences' minds off the Nazi invasion of Norway. From that novel came the 1958 Norwegian thriller "Lake of the Dead," the chief inspiration for this remake, featuring younger, more strapping leads. The story holds a strong fascination on Scandinavian culture. As translated to "Lake of Death" and written and directed by director Nini Bull Robsahm, the remake is roughly equal parts psychological and supernatural in its scare tactics _ a promising mixture, in other words, soon undercut by grinding repetition.
Troubled twin siblings Lillian (Iben Akerlie) and Bjorn (Patrick Walshe McBride) seal a sinister pact in the prologue, as they sit in a rowboat under grey skies, near the remote family cabin on shore. Bjorn's subsequent disappearance haunts Lillian, who returns to the cabin a year later to find some ill-advised closure, prior to the sale of the lakeside residence with the spooky basement and and wonky electrical wiring.
Her cohorts include jokemeister podcaster Bernhard (Jakob Schoyen Anderson); Olympic-level swimmer Sonja (Sophia Lie) and her wormy boyfriend Harald (Elias Munk); Lillian's concerned lover Gabriel (Jonathan Harboe); and Lillian's concerned ex, Kai (Ulric von der Esch), who knows the local lore well enough to take charge of the exposition dump early in "Lake of Death." Back in the 1920s, we learn, patiently, a local man went crazy and killed his wife and wife's lover. We learn also that the lake may be inhabited by a monster, or the wandering spirits of those who drowned.
That covers several maybes. The threats in "Lake of Death" lurk everywhere and nowhere in particular, largely confined to the house itself. Among other influences on the remake, Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" looms largest (it's name-checked out loud). Most of the film involves Lillian poking around, either awake or sleepwalking, wondering if her visions of black goop running down the walls or glimpses of her presumed-dead brother at the window re happening in her head, or outside it. Around the midpoint the film takes a turn into Agatha Christie-meets-"Cabin in the Woods" territory.
Shooting the movie on 35 millimeter film didn't hurt. The inky shadows are truly inky, and director Robsahm gets a craftsmanly boost from frequent Raimi collaborator, editor Bob Murawski ("Army of Darkness," "Drag Me to Hell"). But it's hard to shake the familiarity of the premise and the set-ups in "Lake of Death." The story rhythms wander instead of screw-tighten, and while Robsahm has little interest in Raimi-style pulp or dynamism, the placid surface of "Lake of Death" rarely gets disturbed, or disturbing.
Akerlie's good, though. And until the opening credits, I'd forgotten the inevitable Norwegian word for film editor: "klipper."
