Lake of Death is a Norwegian remake of a famous (I’m told) Norwegian horror movie from 1958, Lake of the Dead. Same in Norwegian, though, as you can see. And man did it know it was a remake, what with all the dialogue references to Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Cabin Fever, and so on. Mostly, that was the only problem with the movie. It couldn’t decide what kind of film it was. Slasher homage? Creepy ghost story? Portrait of a woman in declining sanity? Who knows! It really didn’t make a lick of sense until the last five minutes, at which point it made an extremely small amount of sense but still mostly not.

See, there’s this 20-something girl, and she and her twin brother owned a cabin on a lake in the Norwegian woods, or rather inherited it when they were orphaned, and eventually got it out of trust or got old enough to drive themselves to it, or, I don’t know how it worked. Usually people who are in foster care or being adopted don’t own cabins, okay? But then a year ago, the brother went missing presumed dead, and now the girl and some friends (a podcaster, a Dane, a blonde swimmer, a person who owned a car, and I forget who else) are visiting it and the lake one last time, before she sells the property.

Only, the lake has a creepy history about mesmerising people into being murderers or being a place where parents drowned their sick children who would not recover, and the cabin has unexpected secrets, and also now that they’re at the cabin, animals are being tortured, and people are going missing, and uh oh, oops all murder! ….except, you know, is it a ghost, or a newly crazy person, or a previously crazy person, or all of the above, or none of the above? Too many things, is what I’m saying here. Too many things. Pick a genre! …or transcend it, that’s okay too.

Spoilers, I guess, but I kind of wish it had been the ghost thing.