User Reviews

After the first two weeks of October were pretty rubbish,I started trying to catch up on Horror viewings for the rest of the month. Looking at the TV listings,I found a Horror mini-series about to air,which led to me dipping into the black lake.

The plot:

Gathering all his friends, Johan takes all of them on holiday to a ski centre that has never been opened. Arriving at the centre,Johan reveals that he is in the final stages of buying the place up. Over the next few days,Johan's pals get bloodshot eyes,hear strange noises,and find a locked room in the centre. Unknown to Johan's friends,the place has been left disused,after a murder took place decades ago…

View on the series:

Directing 4 eps each, David Berron & co-writer/(with Peter Arrhenius/Moa Herngren and Ulf Kvensler) director Jonathan Sjöberg use the isolated setting of the disused ski centre for a frosty horror atmosphere of a whistling wind filling the silences and the unexpected shutting of doors reverberating down the corridors. Laced with a tingling score from Björn Palmberg, Berron and Sjöberg mix tinted glimpses to a ghostly past with bloodshot sides of gore,that give the series a much-needed hit of urgency.

Keeping all the group held up in one location,the writers set the foundation for a haunted teen horror,with some psychological depth. Running at a trim 42 minute run-time for each ep,the writers offer signs of a "body count" chiller, but freezes all hope of it coming to life,with the eps being largely filled with poorly-written attempts to explore each character,that ends in them all losing their initial motivation to solve the case. Eyeing a supernatural horror,the writers at first open the door to a mysterious slow-burn puzzle of what took place at the centre. As the episodes unfold,the writers sadly take missteps in allowing no progression in the building of the horrors, (why would no one think of breaking the door down?) until the very last moment,which to a thud of a "twist ending",that sinks into the black lake.

There will be SPOILERS.

The first season turns around a distant ski-resort, which never effectively opened due to a dramatic homicidal crime in the opening season. Since then, 30 years ago, it's kept on minimum capacity by a caretaker and 2 brothers of the nearby village. A young representative of a family bussinnes, sees perspective in the secluded surroundings. To inspect it further he books a sky trip for his friends and himself. Right from the start of there arrival things seems to go wrong or not as expacted. The longer the stories goes the more the history unveil itself, with all the bad horror consequences as result. Nobody seems to be honest, specially the caretaker and the two brothers from the village. Along with the mostly twisted backgrounds of the characters things get cincerly out of hand like a good horror flick supose to. Add a mysterious dark force and things really starts hitting the vens. Skincrawling stupide behaviour runs all over the place topping it of as better than average.

It's hard to work through the first 20 minutes but then it got above e.

After watching the first series I should have known better. But short of something to watch I gave series 2 a go. 8 episodes that should have been 4. I have watched paint dry quicker ! Every horror story cliche was given an airing - flickering lights, creaking doors, howling wind and mysterious shadows to name a few. I tried to give up half way but was determined to stick it out to see if the story actually went anywhere. It's like a book you start reading, find it's rubbish and skip chapters just to get to the end. If they come out with a series 3, I will give it a miss !

Everyone was so relaxed with everything that was happening, which is weird as 2 of there friends died. I loved that they brought some LGBTQ into it as I didn't expect that. I found the story line was really longed out and it didn't need to be. I love the location and they are good actors all of them.

Johan is hoping to buy a disused hotel and ski resort in a remote area of Sweden, near the Norwegian border, so goes there with a group of friends to check it out. The resort was built several years ago but never opened because of a murder that took place there. It wasn't abandoned though; a caretaker was employed to look after the building. He isn't the friendliest of characters but shows them round; he tells them not to try to go down into the locked cellar. Disturbing things start to happen almost straight away; the first night one of the girls hears a banging from the cellar but even then the caretaker refuses to open the door. It soon becomes apparent that some people there are determined that Johan won't buy the resort but their motives aren't obvious. That is the least of their worries though. They start finding strange pictures, which look as though they were drawn by a child; then one of the girls attacks her boyfriend claiming that if she doesn't kill somebody she will die… things soon get even worse and it is clear that they won't all survive.

This was an impressive chiller; the beautiful snowbound location created a good sense of isolation and the old hotel was delightfully creepy. There were some genuinely scary moments; often this was when it felt like something bad was sure to happen any moment rather than when something actually happened. The question is to whether the threat was human or something else remained for some time; although the way several of the guests suffered what appeared to be an infection in one eye before going on to behave strangely suggested the latter. The story nicely incorporated Scandinavia myths, with talk of Mylings, references historical mistreatment of the native Sami people as well as more modern motives. There are some clichés of course; Johan and his friends are the typical attractive twenty-somethings and the ending is slightly ambiguous; there is a suggestion that the survivors won't last long but they are still well when the credits roll. Overall I'd recommend this series; it is nicely creepy, has some good scares and is different from most series coming out of Scandinavia (at least that have made it to the UK).

These comments are based on watching the series in the original languages with English subtitles.

A very good season 2. I strongly recommend watching. The story,the message, even the characters are very well depicted.