Mørke sjeler (2010) Reviews

• "Dark Souls"

  cambridgefilmfest2010-09-28

  If Abel Ferrara's DRILLER KILLER and Larry Cohen's THE STUFF were dropped inside a Magimix and the resulting concoction seasoned with a dusting of tongue-in-cheek humour it'd likely end up looking something like Mathieu Peteul and Cesar Ducasse's DARK SOULS. The film opens with a teenage girl named Johanna (Johanna Gustavsson) jogging alone through the woods. She barely has time to build up a sweat before a sinister figure dressed in orange overalls wrestles her to the ground and bores a hole into the side of her head with an electric drill. Later, moments after she returns home, her father Morten (Morten Ruda) receives a phone call from the police pronouncing her dead. His joking and laughing is soon turned to shock when she starts vomiting up thick black bile. It turns out she is the first victim of a bizarre wave of attacks involving a mysterious black liquid which transforms otherwise healthy individuals into mindless, rotting zombies. As his daughter slowly loses control of her bodily functions and her skin begins to blacken and decay, a distraught Morten takes it upon himself to go track down those responsible. Fans of Chris Morris' JAM will no doubt find plenty of laughs in the ludicrousness of Morten's situation as Johanna slowly becomes his pet zombie but the film is also at times a sensitive portrait of fatherly devotion. And when Morten is shown watching old Super 8 family films with his daughter's limp, rotten body propped beside him it's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry. Lazy clichés such as the slasher movie's 'last woman standing' rule are subverted: our hero is not a nubile teenager but a bewildered, overweight father looking for the man who drilled his daughter, leaving her zombified. References to horror classics are skillful and witty, for example the homeless oil diver's expositional monologue which mirrors Quint's famous speech in JAWS. Winner of Best Horror at the Manhattan and Swansea film festivals, DARK SOULS brings slick thrills and oil spills without resorting to easy scares. 5 out of 5 Cambridge Film Festival Daily

• a compilation of the classics

  trashgang2012-10-02

  Dark Souls, a strange movie to review because it looks like a compilation of the best of horror so far. We have a killer, we have in fact a driller killer. That did ring a bell, The Driller Killer (1979). I can go on and on. There are so many references towards the classics that you forget to watch the flick itself. The whole story itself is strange. There's not that much explained and towards the end it changes into something like, here we go again, The Crazies (1973). In between we see what happens with the people being attacked by the driller killer. The father tries to take care of his daughter who's being attacked. There's a lot of stuff (no pun intended) coming out of the mouth of the victims being transformed. And there's even an ode to the Italian classics by showing how a drill can enter a face or a body. It never bored me although the acting wasn't always convincing but it's really the story that sucks you into Dark Souls. It will not be for everybody but if you are willing to see a strange story then this is for you. Gore 2/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Coemdy 0/5

• Review: Dark Souls (Mørke Sjeler)

  movieevangelist2011-01-25

  The Pitch: Oily Vomit Of The Living Dead. The Review: I will be honest, this, in nearly 100 reviews I've written, has been one of if not the most difficult one line pitches to write. Part of that is down to how much is going on in this quiet little Norwegian chiller, which while running to only just over an hour and a half covers an awful lot of territory in that time. The one substance in abundance in this movie is oil, but it's not the only black entity around, as much of the humour is of the dark variety. Dark Souls attempts to put a smile on your face as it drills into your brain, and it succeeds to a large extent in that endeavour. We start with a young girl, Johanna (Johanna Gustavson), who is attacked by a man in an orange boiler suit with an electric drill and left for dead, found face down in the mud by the police who pronounce her dead and have her taken to the mortuary. This comes as a surprise to her loving father, Morten (Morten Ruda), who's seen her walk in the door not moments earlier. But there's something not quite right about Johanna any more, and she's not alone. While detective Askestad (Kyrre H. Sydness) attempts to uncover the truth behind these mystery murders, and the local doctor (Jan Harstad) attempts to uncover the truth behind these rather lively corpses and their strange symptoms, Morten attempts to re-establish family life with Johanna as best as possible, but is slowly but surely drawn into the secret world behind it all. Directors and writers Mathieu Petuel and César Ducasse obviously know their horror. There's a deliberate, unhurried pace from start to end and, as with so many other effective horror movies over the years, the pacing is used to build tension and to unsettle the viewer. This isn't your average American slasher, filled with jump cuts and loud bursts on the soundtrack in a vain attempt to summon up scares, everything here is designed more to pick at your nerves and unsettle, apart from the occasional head drilling, of course. The acting is generally fit for purpose, so while it won't win any awards, it does engage your sympathy in all the right ways, and Morten Ruda is the stand out, carrying more of the narrative as the movie progresses and allowing the mix of off-kilter laughs to blend perfectly with the feeling and the pain. The use of oil is also an interesting motif, but its allegorical use pales in comparison to the body horror of watching it exude from every pore of its victims, and it gives them a distinctive and effective look. There are also a lot of references to other horror movies thrown into the mix (more than this casual horror fan could ever detect), but the overall narrative, while taking occasional tangents, hangs together very effectively, and the abiding impression is of a deliciously dark movie that will creep under your skin like the oil in its victims. Why see it at the cinema: There's plenty of effective imagery, both subtle and in-your-face, and of course this is at its core a horror movie, so why not guarantee yourself a dark room with a large screen to make the most of the chills? The Score: 8/10

• A man tracks his daughter's attacker, an enigmatic killer who injects a bizarre pathogen into his victims' brains.

  pameladegraff2013-05-14

  A toolbox killer is running loose in Oslo with a nasty drilling habit. After screwing a hole in his victims' skulls, he injects something strange into their brains which kills them. But not for long. They come back to life, their gradually rotting bodies producing a mysterious new hydrocarbon, like crude oil, a foul, caustic, bilious substance which they vomit up in great abundance. When his daughter (Broch) is found dead with a drill hole in her cranium, Morten (Ravn) receives a call from the police requesting him to identify her body. But he can't, he answers, there must be some mistake. She's perfectly alright, right here at home, just came in the door. But Morten's daughter Maria is anything but alright. Her face is rotting and she's barfing oil. When perplexed doctors ask to experiment on her, Morten decides to take Maria back home, covering all his furnishings with protective plastic to guard against her, um, frequent spills. Brain damaged, deranged, Maria stumbles about the apartment and stares blankly at the dinner table, repeatedly banging her spoonful of mashed potatoes into her cheek and forehead instead of into her mouth. Meanwhile, the victim count rises as the mad driller strikes again and again throughout Oslo. Following a chance encounter in which the culprit attacks Morten, Morten, with Maria in tow, begins tracking the maniac. Morten discovers a ghastly connection to a sinister North Sea, deep drilling oil disaster, as he unearths a bizarre, nightmarish, dark plot. Dark Souls is a Norwegian effort, and North Seas oil production is a major nationalized industry in Norway. Eighty percent of Norwegian petroleum production is owned by the government, which retains 85% of net petroleum revenues. The Norwegian government effectively distributes the benefits of its oil wealth, regionally and throughout its population. Due also in part to a generous social welfare system, an equitable labor relations system and a progressive tax system, Norway can boast one of the lowest levels of income inequality in the world. The benefit comes at a cost; Like any country, Norway has had its share of shameful petroleum mishaps, from the June 2000 Project Deep Spill, the first ever international deep sea oil spill, to the more recent 2007 Statfjord oil spill, and the 2009 Full City oil spill. Norway has strong government oversight of oil exploration and extraction. Citizens expect accountability from their governing bodies. Controversial courses of action by Norway's Ministries of Industry and Petroleum and Energy have been the subject of major environmental protests and lawsuits. An example stems from the Norwegian government's go-ahead for continued Arctic drilling despite appalling, hazardous 2007 and 2008 StatoilHydro leaks in the Barents Sea. It's little wonder then that Norway's Dark Souls' finds its inspiration in the viscous black well of its own petroleum industry. The film's prominent themes are familiar ones. The concept of environmental bad karma and mysterious substances which once ingested, wreak recombinant DNA havoc strongly smack of movies we've seen before. To wit: H.G. Wells' The Food of the Gods (1976), The Children (1980 and 2008 -previously reviewed here), and The Stuff (1985). In each of these films, malignant industries go too far in the name of greed. Fallout ensues in the form of a grotesque backlash where monsters dole out horrid retribution upon the society which passively stood by while corporate outrages were committed against nature. Some subtle tongue-in-cheek posturing lets us know that Dark Souls doesn't take itself too seriously, yet it is never campy or silly. The film manages to combine some chills with delightfully disgusting revulsion. Featuring an abundance of Steadicam shots, Dark Souls imposes a close-in, almost documentary-style, gritty feeling, without straying into the realm of cheap "found footage" style movies. While more mysterious and eerie than horrifying and scary, Dark Souls is a first rate production with a few memorable scenes, and a refreshing lack of a Hollywood-requisite "happy ending."

• Low budget Norwegian horror

  Leofwine_draca2018-03-28

  DARK SOULS is a dark and dingy slice of Norwegian horror, made on a tiny budget. The story is about characters who go missing only to reappear somehow different. It's a story that flirts with tropes from the zombie genre but which plays out as a slow-moving police procedural for the most part. There's a lot of low key investigation, a lot of wandering around in poorly-lit locations, and more plot than expected for such a low budget feature. I found the horror content too self-limiting and the film to be lacking the requisite power needed to make it work.