It might be hard to believe now, given the contemporary landscape of Nordic films andTV series filled with thrillersand horrors, butthere was a time when Scandinavian cinema didn’t feature a lot of genre outings.Lake of the Dead, part horror and part mystery, which came out in 1958, wasn’t the first scary movie to come out of Scandinavia, but it was the first forNorwegian cinema. As such, it’s amazing how much the authors managed to pack into their first effort, including the theme that would become one of the major ones inScandi genre cinema:the clash between the rational and the supernatural. Even more curiously, this film, directed byKåre Bergstrøm, uses anunreliable narratorin a very self-ironic, almost meta way: by having a crime fiction novelist recount the events that served as the material for his new book and that supposedly happened some time ago with him and his friends at an allegedly cursed lake house.
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Like another great Scandinavian horror classic,The Phantom Carriage(1921), the story ofLake on the Deadis told through an extended flashback that shows usthe chaotic three days at the lakethat turn dark rather quickly. A mystery novelist, Bernhard Borge, his wife Sonja, and their four friends go away for a long weekend, heading toa remote cabin on a picturesque lake shore. The cabin is owned by Werner, the brother of Liljan (one of the people in the group), but when they arrive at the house in the woods, their host is missing. While passing time, the friends learnalegend about the dark past of this place, which includes a murder/ suicide, and talk about a cursethat will torment anyone who stays in the cabin, driving them to kill themselves. While exploring the area around the lake, the group discovers alarming traces that hint at the idea that Werner might have indeed committed suicide. All the while, strange occurrences keep mounting, suggesting thatsomething supernatural might be at play.
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Cold winters and gorgeous landscapes lend themselves well to striking horror sequences.
Several decades beforethe slasher subgenre fully embraced the whole setupfeaturing horny teenagers trying to have fun at acabin in the woods, while a masked villain with a machete is hiding in the bush, this Norwegian horror proved that the concept works well even with some tweaks.Instead of teenagers,Lake of the Deadhas adult characterswho are firmly set in their ways (which will play a significant role in subsequent events). Instead of an insistent sex drive, there is a mystery plot about an obsessive love. And instead of a masked maniac, there are phantasms of human subconsciousness. So, despite some uncanny similarities with slasher and, at times,folk horror, Kåre Bergstrøm’s movie comes off more as a precursor of modernslow-burn horrors, and, similarly to them,touches upon the intricacies of a human mind that can conjure terror more effectively than any actual curse.
While beingthe de facto narrator, the fiction novelist Bernhard isn’t the actual lead in his own story, as the real investigation is conducted by another character, his psychologist friend, Bugge, who tries to find a rational explanation for all the weird occurrences. Their other friend, a magazine editor, Mørk, likes to play devil’s advocate by suggesting alternative answers to the mystery and being open to a supernatural explanation.In an almost postmodern manner, the writer doesn’t fully control his narrative, both in the present when he’s done with the book and throughout the story, where he strives to lead but mostly ends up getting in everyone’s hair. As if predicting thefuture boom of true-crime enthusiasts, Bernhard is fine going along with any possible explanation,occultor reasonable, as long as it’s appropriately entertaining or sensational.
This duality — the constantly present question of whether something mystical is really happening — also transpires through the film’s aesthetic. Thestunning cinematic imagery of the surrounding nature plays a crucial role in the film’s style(which will become another trademark for Scandinavian genre outings), but also in the way the central mystery unfolds. Unlike mosthorror films that use the woodsas their primary setting (such asThe Ritual, where the story is set in the depths of a Swedish forest),Lake of the Deaddoesn’t lean too much into depicting it as an inherently macabre, menacing place, where darkness prevails, and every crunch sounds ominous. Bergstrøm uses the opposite technique: instead of convulsively fussing around, the camera is orderly and still; instead of abrupt, piercing sounds, there is a resounding silence.
The sun is shining brightly here more often than not, creating a stark contrast with the shots of the titular lake we are regularly treated to throughout the film. But thedark waterswe are forced to gaze into together with the characters aren’t merely literal —this darkness represents the depths of human consciousness that can conceal any number of gruesome secrets. In this sense,Lake of the Deadcuriously precedesAlfred Hitchcock’sPsychoand the myriad subsequentGiallo mystery films, which relied heavily on articulate psychoanalytic explanations involving repressed traumas, obsessive desires, and deeply symbolic dreams. The ending of the complicated story ofLake of the Dead, which features not one but two unreliable narrators, as well as flashbacks within flashbacks, puts a neat bow on the mystery,suggesting that there are possible rational explanations for the most irrational occurrences. Still, the duality persists in the very last seconds of screen time, hinting thatthe evil inside the human minddoesn’t cancel out the darkness that’s lurking outside.
