What a waste of my time!!!

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Good start, but then it gets ruined

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Although I enjoyed the director's first movie, Cold Prey, I didn't expect to like Escape as much as I did. Set in medieval Norway, it's a bleak, atmospheric and thrilling movie with great acting (from the first-time child actors as well), great cinematography, and an eerie soundtrack that fits perfectly. Its story about a girl escaping from a camp and being hunted by her captors is simple and not too original (it reminds me a bit of Apocalypto, which I'm sure wasn't the first to do this either), but it's executed so well that didn't bother me at all. If you're into movies like Black Death and Evil Rising (Sauna), you're definitely going to want to check this one out.

I'm not sure I've seen a film as satisfyingly simple as 'Flukt' in years.The year is 1363. The place is Norway, recently decimated by the bubonic plague. A young girl's family is murdered by a group of roving bandits and the girls is taken hostage. With the help of another young girl within the group of bandits, she escapes and the two girls flee across breathtakingly beautiful Norwegian landscapes with the bandits in close pursuit. This, in a nutshell, is the entire movie.I'm a fan of simple films. I think the present day trend to blend too many subplots leads to 3 hour, convoluted, bloated stinkers (The Dark Knight and Pirates of the Caribbean, I'm looking at you...) but in some ways 'Flukt' was too simple for its own good. I was invested in the wellbeing of the two girls but I never really felt a sense of danger or surprise because the plot played it so safe and trod such predictable ground. You know this is going to turn out okay and even the ways in which the antagonists are dispatched are unfortunately over-telegraphed.I would have loved to have seen a bit more of an edgy approach to the plot, a few twists and turns that weren't so obvious. But still, it's beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and exciting enough to keep your attention. Also clocking in at only 78 minutes, it's so short that even if you dislike it, you won't feel like you wasted any time.

This film was actually more enjoyable with subtitles - it's interesting how many phrases sound identical to Scots. That aside, I've not been so absorbed in a film for a long time. I noticed an earlier review which mentioned that a rubber sole on a shoe was visible in one scene - my thoughts while watching the film were that the footwear seemed authentic and that the soles appeared to be wooden, and I think that sounds likely to be feasible, as wooden soles and clogs were around in Europe since before Roman times. The overall period feel of the film seemed faultless to me. The performances of all the actors were of a high order and wholly convincing. The script tells a simple yet powerful story - usually I tend to answer email and reply to messages in the middle of films these days (getting old, I guess) but not with this one. Excellent film.

Incredible filming, with typical Norwegian woods and landscape. The directors and clippers know what they are doing. Great music score, and a good story. Composer and writer know what they are doing.But as a Norwegian who understands the language, I wonder what happened to the actors. This movie brings me right back to the movies made in Norway during the 70-ies and 80-ies, when they brought stage actors to the movie screen. No sentence uttered in this movie, from any character, comes out naturally. It's like it was played on a stage, not on the screen.I really wish I had seen this movie without understanding the dialog, then it would have been great.