WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
Unless it is just the coincidence of most of the films I’ve found but it seems that the Dutch do like their slasher films. There’s actually a few films on this list that I would willingly watch again – may be not for a while so that I forget the outcome but definitely worth a re-watch and maybe a space on the DVD shelf. It also seems that Dick Maas is a very prolific horror director in the Netherlands as he directed 3 of 6 films below…
Prey
I know I’ve mentioned a few times in both my articles about Spanish and Italian horror about my preference for subtitles over dubbing, those I could let slide because the dubbing wasn’t too bad – however, this is absolutely shocking! Anyway, I think the premise of the film is really good – reminds me of a Netflix series I started watching called Zoo but that was more than one form of animal. If I had been able to get the original version in Dutch then I could probably let it slide how bad the lion looks at times. It’s just a downside that the terrible dubbing was a little bit distracting because the deaths look so realistic.
The Windmill Massacre
I love a slasher film as much as the next person (as long as the next person loves slasher films that is) and, for me, this film is a little like Final Destination which I like to call ‘occult slasher’. Final Destination plays on the idea of ‘when your numbers up, your numbers up’ but this film is almost like the antagonist is Karma – you do something, it’s going to come back and bite you on the behind! After a while it became a little predictable that most of the group had killed someone at some point in their life but that doesn’t take anything away from the film for me. Especially as it has some other little surprises….
Saint
For me, this is the kind of film Krampus should have been. Now, this is going to sound pretty dark, but I quite like the fact that this is ultimately a slasher but children aren’t off-limits as victims! You don’t see it, but you know it happens – like the moment when the doors open to the children’s wing of the hospital we don’t need to see it to know how it’s going to end for them. This film has its mixture of humour and violence – because only a film in Dutch can make the term ‘double Dutch’ funny. As unconventional Christmas films go, this would definitely be up there as one of the good ones.
Amsterdamned
The opening to this film is very similar to that of Prey (no surprise, same director). For me this is more of a crime thriller than a horror film. I say this because the majority of the film is spent focusing on the police rather than the killings and the serial killer. If you think about it, a lot of horror films are simple based on serial killers (Scream/Ghostface, Friday 13th/Jason Voorhees, Halloween/Michael Myers – should I continue?) but the difference is, they are the main focus of their films and the police are just ancillary characters.
Sneekweek
This film sticks to the traditional slasher film theme – prank/hazing goes wrong and years later someone’s out for revenge. Normally that ends up being the person everyone thought was dead but in this case we’ve got a bit of a Scream style ending – even though this was much easier to figure who the killers were. I thought this was going to be typically cheesy and not at all a good film but I really enjoyed it – for one main reason, the women actually put up at fight! There was none of this run away or run upstairs rubbish – they fought for their lives.
Trapped
The genius of this film lies in its simplicity – even though I don’t think it turned out to be as simple as the cat and mouse story I thought it was in the beginning. With about 30 minutes left, you realise there is something so much darker afoot and because the film is so simple at first with its ‘jump scares’ and ‘single character cast’, it makes the final moments that much creepier. I don’t want to say too much because I really feel like this film is worth a watch…
