Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Very Cool!!!

Purely Joyful Movie!

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

After all the hype I found the first Cold Prey movie very underwhelming, it felt like just another slasher and really didn't have much about itself to set it apart from the others.The sequel followed on perfectly and actually impressed me, suddenly I found myself on the Cold Prey bandwagon.Then the third, a prequel and essentially origin story for our antagonist and it goes back to it's roots as a generic slasher flick but with even less personality than the first film.Set in the 1980's around (You guessed it) a group of 20 somethings who go camping and run into our bad guy, get picked off one by one and you know the rest.Sadly it's all done poorly, it doesn't feel like it's even connected to the established Cold Prey universe and really feels more like a cash grab than an addition to the series.The Good: Very dark endingThe Bad: Poorly made Rather dull No originality Brings nothing to the Cold Prey franchise Things I Learnt From This Movie:Even Norwegians will milk a franchise beyond its means All good protagonists hide and watch while they're friends get butchered

When I first heard that they were making a third "Cold Prey" movie, which pre dates the first two showing a back story on the killer, I was actually quite pleased, as we only saw glimpses in the first two. I am a big fan of the first two and wrote glowing reviews for them rating them 10 and 9, but this one I only rate 5, because quite frankly I was really disappointed.Okay the beginning opened up quite well, when we finally get to see what happened to his parents and the way they treated him, but that was over in 10 minutes and then it cuts to a group of teens camping in the nearby woods. I was hoping the third would somehow capture both positive aspects of each film, but sadly, Cold Prey 3 turned out to be your pretty standard backwoods slasher that we've seen several times before.Another complaint is that this one is set in summer time which kinda defeats the object of being called "Cold Prey" There's even a clichéd scene where some of the characters decide to go skinny dipping in a lake, which seems to be some sort of requirement in backwoods slashers for some odd reason. Speaking of characters, none of them are likable, in my opinion. With the little development we're given for each person, it leaves us with little reason to care whether they'll somehow survive through the ordeal.All in all "Cold Prey 3" isn't a particularly bad film, as a stand alone it would have been pretty good, it just lacks the brilliance the first two, so I hope it's now come to an end.

A few years ago, filmmaker Roar Uthaug attempted to add a new name to the short list of legendary horror villains. While he's yet to have the same impact as past characters like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, the snow-suited Gunnar is definitely one of the most interesting horror maniacs to hit the genre in a while.After two films of standard, yet hugely effective, stalk-and-slash fare, the 'Cold Prey' series returns with its third installment: a prequel showing the early years of the nut with the pick axe. I was a bit disappointed at first by the decision to go with a prequel, mainly because I very much liked the bad-ass character of Jannicke (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal). However, the opening scenes showing the killer as a child were interesting enough to make it a better idea. These scenes ended quickly, though, and the film returned to another installment set in the same formula as the other entries, but with a lower quality cast of victims (due mainly to just how painfully dumb they all were).Regardless of how good 'Cold Prey II' was, one thing it did not have was originality. Viewers may have noticed the obvious similarities of it to John Carpenter's 'Halloween II.' The closeness of the two films did bother some, but the structure and style made it distinct enough to make it its own solid film (and one of the best slashers of the decade). For this third part of the series, the writers decided to become "inspired" by yet another American horror. From the start, the are some pretty obvious connections to 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning': It's a prequel, it adds in more blatant torture elements, it has the same basic story as its predecessor, etc. Hell, there's even a scene where a victim is grabbed and pulled backward through a screen in blatant Leatherface style. However, Norway has never really been big on horror filmmaking, so we should all be willing to grant them a bit of leniency when it comes to originality as they build up the genre.Perhaps the most crucial issue 'Cold Prey III' has is one of the most obvious: It completely betrays its own title. Imagine of a 'Halloween' sequel took place on, I dunno, the Fourth of July. That'd be pretty dumb, wouldn't it? Same goes for this film. Why call a film 'Cold Prey' and have it take place when it's not even cold? Granted, this is Norway, so it's probably a little cold pretty much all the time, but one of the only reasons the series stood apart from its peers was thanks to the beautiful snow-covered mountain landscapes and the way the directors & cinematographers expertly made use of them in creating their fantastic visuals. Here, though, the film could be a part of any horror series. What makes it much different than any other forest-set torture flick, like 'Carver' for instance? Frankly, not a whole lot.Overall, while this new sequel in the Norwegian horror franchise is entertaining enough, it just cannot stand up to its earlier entries, mainly because of the decision to trade in the well crafted suspense & tension of the first two films for an increase in torture-themed gore & violence. I hope to see a return to form in the next installment, hopefully with the help with one of the original directors.Final Verdict: 5.5/10.-AP3-

Four years ago I gave a glowing review to the first real Norwegian horror movie ever (unless you count Villmark which was more of a thriller or the DTV crap "22" which was more like a bad nightmare). Cold Prey blew my mind. Sure, to most of you it's probably a mediocre slasher flick but to me it raised the bar for Norwegian movies.Maybe this is why the first one was a success. The second one was okay-ish. A bit too much action and not enough horror if you ask me but still a solid entry. Now we have the third, supposedly (and hopefully) final entry in this franchise and I have to say with a heavy heart that this was a disappointment to the extreme.What is supposed to be a prequel comes off as a sloppy dtv-remake of the first one - without the snow - or the hotel. The dialogues seem to be copied and pasted from the first movie and even the characters are similar (only this time we have a bunch of REALLY bad actors without any real characteristics). These actors were so bad that I cringed in the seat as it was so uncomfortable watching them deliver their basic dialogues. The first 5 minutes or so are prequel-ish but the movie really doesn't explain anything. It felt as if the crew wasn't allowed to shoot inside the hotel this time so instead it took place in the woods and in two small houses near the hotel (??????).This is less Friday the 13th and more Wrong Turn - but without the actual excitement. Imagine Cold Prey meets Wrong Turn meets Manhunt (yes, this could indeed very well have been the sequel to Manhunt aka Rovdyr, that might actually have made more sense as this felt nothing like the first two Cold Prey movies).I won't go on about it but if you want a very standard DTV slasher from the 80s that somehow was forgotten and crawled onto the big screen 25 years later - here you have it. The mediocre slasher flick that everyone will forget within a year. Too bad, this franchise had so much potential.