Norwegian horror cinema has divided itself into three main trends. The major subgenres of the slasher film and the psychological horror film were apparent from the outset, and soon after a wave of genre hybrids saw horror combined with other genres like comedy and action adventure to great popular effect.

In later years, a fourth trend has also come to the fore. The mainstream horror film has been eclipsed, almost completely, not only by the big budget disaster movie, but also by the independent and very low-budget underground horror previously consigned to DVD releases and genre festival appearances. This emergence of underground horror in cinemas nationwide rides on the back of digital distribution technology, exploiting the genre entertainment awareness that has marked the behaviour of Norwegian audiences throughout the period covered in this book.

However, Norwegian horror cinema seems unwilling to let go of its roots. The return to the source of horror in 2019’s Lake of Death (De dødes tjern, Nini Bull Robsahm), and also the unexpected sequel Dark Woods 2 (Villmark 2, Pål Øie) in 2015, suggests that Norwegian horror, despite the thematic and stylistic advances made in The Monitor (Babycall, Pål Sletaune, 2011), Thelma (Joachim Trier, 2017) and The Innocents (De uskyldige, Eskil Vogt, 2021), might never part from certain premises. The most important of these seems to be the notion that darkness and evil always emanate from nature, from wilderness, and most particularly from dead water.

‘No life, no oxygen’: Back to the Dark Woods

Dark Woods 2 (also known as Villmark: Asylum internationally) is Pål Øie’s sequel to his own ground-breaking genre film Dark Woods (Villmark, 2003), but it does not follow the surviving characters from that story. Instead, although the film is not a prequel, it digs into the backstory of the lake and the dark events of the past that were hinted at in the first film. In doing so, Øie turns up the intensity and increases the threat from dead water. This time around, terrifying things do not merely come out of the water, but the water itself becomes an active threat, seeping into the action with violent force.

The setting for Dark Woods 2 might be described as a contemporary Norwegian version of the gothic castle.