[Hidden (Skjult)]
Plot:Follows Kai Knutsen who fled through the woods, from his crazed mother 20 years ago. Now the woman he hated more than anything on earth is dead, and he has inherited the house in the forest. It has a cruel secret.

Cast:Arthur Berning, Bjarte Hjelmeland, Kristoffer Joner, Marko Iversen Kanic, Anders Danielsen Lie, Cecilie A. Mosli, Karin Park.

My Thoughts:Should've stayed Hidden.

Review:"Skjult" (Hidden) is a Norweigian horror pic which follows a man who returns home due to his mothers passing. He soon learns she has left him her house in the woods, and so upon investigating the house, he soon learns it holds a dark and tragic secret. As far as I'm concerned, this movie....was a dark and tragic secret. A secret that should've stayed buried.

The film employs all of the usual strategies, cliches, and tactics that American psychological horror films are well-known for. And ironically enough, they're all strategies we hate. Misdirection, among the most annoying of them all. There's nothing worse than misdirecting the viewerer into a story that makes no sense, and isn't even what it seems to be about on the surface. "Hidden" starts off edgy, and with some potential.

But it quickly squanders it by becoming repetitive and giving us a main character who could bore Eeyore the donkey. I mean this guy is painful to watch on-screen. His acting isn't that bad, but the character is written to be a real drag. And a pretty battered-looking dude to boot. The pic basically tries to get us to believe that this guys dead mother, who apparently liked to torture and pretend-drown her son in the bathtub when he was a child (there go those cliches again), is haunting him from beyond the grave for some reason.

Probably because she's pissed he didn't give her one of those super expensive funerals. Or something like that, I can't remember really, heh. At any rate, cue up the scenes of him seeing his mother in a demonic form in the bathtub like 45 times, seeing her in the mirror behind him like 30 times, and all of the stuff we're used to seeing in American horror movies. I would think filmmakers would know by now that the "fake out" scares can become boring and tedious after awhile.

But apparently the strategy is to keep using them becuse the script is absent of anything exciting, and they've gotta keep the story moving, so what's a bad screenwriter to do huh? If you're looking for story coherency here, this film does have it. But, the story is so droll, boring, bland, and lifeless (much like the sceneries in this movie), that you don't care to follow it with any real enjoyment or intrigue. As a viewer, I don't like to feel like I'm just going through the motions.

Which is exactly what I felt while watching this movie. There wasn't a single exciting moment in a nearly 100 minute film, tragic indeed. But there was a lot of weirdness, and the movie does make one scene work really well. A scene involving the main character and a female hotel employee which mixes a bit of Kubrick's "The Shining" in with things. But pretty soon it's back to reality, and following this utterly boring character through this boring mystery.

And speaking of which, the mystery itself is a pretty sad and pathetic one, and if you were expecting one of those climactic battle between good and evil finales, well think again. This movie goes out with a whimper, all the while revealing it's big twist to be a total joke. If I were a horror film fan, watcher, or conniseur, I'd "Hide" from "Hidden". It's a horror film that's thin on actual horror, and heavy on poorly-crafted mystery, and also is steeped in thrills that are cheaper than the local get-around-girl. Definitely a must-avoid movie.

Positives:One scene which pays homage sort of to "The Shining".

Negatives:A poorly-written script, a boring main character, depressing sceneries, a lack of thrills and chills, lackluster everything pretty much, and the worst, twist ending ever.

Overall:Half a star out of four.





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