There are moments in our lives we must remember our past
Main Cast: Kai Kross, Cecilie A. Mosli
Director: Pal Oie
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
While I don’t know if I’d qualify 2009’s HIDDEN (original title SKJULT) as too graphic, too disturbing, or too shocking, it’s definitely got something many other horror movies lack: mood.
It’s been 19 years since Kai Koss (Kristopher Joner) has been home. As a boy, he escaped his mother’s brutal abuse (Kai was kept locked in a small room in the basement, behind a hidden panel, and he sports a very big and nasty burn scar where his mother once poured boiling water on him for wetting the bed), only to inadvertently cause the death of a couple who had pulled over to the side of the road so their son could pee in the woods. Haunted by that memory, and by what happened to him at his own mother’s “loving” hand, Kai is understandably hesitant to return. But his mother’s dead now and, with no will or legal documents, he has inherited the house. He means to burn it down.
It’s a tough trip back home, especially when every memory is a bad one. The house haunts him, but not nearly as much as what Kai believes may be a presence in the house.
HIDDEN is a very good movie, very atmospheric, and it’s obvious from the get-go that this story has some pretty big secrets. It takes its time revealing them, meanwhile plunging Kai and the local sheriff, Sara (Cecilie A. Mosli), further into Kai’s past and the events of the night he escaped.
Writer/director Pal Oie knows his way very well around a suspense story, which is more what HIDDEN is than anything else. There are many many MANY elements of horror present, from mysterious red balls rolling around the house, to hands reaching out from the dark, to a couple of local campers stumbling upon the house, but the heart of this story is the suspense. We know what we THINK is going on, what Kai thinks is going on, and it makes sense, he could be right. But if he’s not, then he’s just become the prime suspect and nothing he says is reliable anymore. So we’re locked up in this mystery, trying to unravel it with our characters, seeing it from an objective point of view, but hoping Kai is right. Then again, if he is right, that opens a whole other very big and depressing can of worms because it still leaves him indirectly responsible.
No, I won’t go into any more detail because discovering this story at the pace Oie set is part of what makes it so good.
SKJULT is a Norwegian production, with subtitles, and one of the biggest, most in your face characters is the setting. The lighting is dim, the background dull and overcast. Watching this movie, you could easily believe the sun has never shone on Norway and that the people who live there have never felt the comfort of a dry day. Every shot is miserable and depressing, and this feeling permeates the movie and enhances the experience-not necessarily in a positive way.
I felt Oie took a few cheap shots with some horror movie clichés, and a few way obvious homages to a couple movies in particular (could the ball rolling along the floor have recalled anything else but 1980’s THE CHANGELING?), and yes, for me, these hurt the movie–not in big ways, but in definite ones nonetheless; we were getting along so well, enjoying each other’s company, the movie and I, and it has to interrupt the flow with a jump scare here and there. Unnecessary.
But like I said, they didn’t affect HIDDEN in big ways, and overall I think this is one of the top After Dark IV movies yet. Granted, I’m only four movies into the series, but the rest would have to be truly amazing to top it, and my faith in that happening isn’t high. In the end, the work speaks for itself and hopefully more people will see this one and come to see how well-made it was. I don’t like the shortcuts Oie took for a scare, but the story is good, the acting is great, and I could feel the chill of the setting through the screen. I need a hot bath and a cup of coffee now just to warm myself up.
Read more 8 Films to Die For reviews
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
Leave a Reply