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Codex Atanicus
Codex Atanicus is a three story anthology by Spanish director Carlos Atanes. Before watching the movie I never heard of the guy, but the introduction video on the DVD by one of his regular actresses Arantxa Peña made me realize that I'm in for a hell of a ride. Experimental, bizarre, sick, strange - these are some of the words that describe the stories contained in Codex Atanicus. The anthology is opened by a 20 minute short from 1995 called Metaminds & Metabodies. I am really not into this kind of experimental videos, but I will try to summarize. It opens with a girl singing in the club. Everything looks ultra underground and the girl is connected with some wires to the walls. Strange people are watching her...
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Movie Review: Drowning Ghost

Story
A hundred years ago, three students attending the Hellestads Boarding School were brutally killed and the man who murdered them drowned himself in a lake nearby. In present time, what happened a hundred years ago has become a famous ghost story. The legend has it that the murderer, once every year, rises from the lake and walks the hallways at the school, dragging his scythe after him across the floors. Sara, a student at the Boarding School, is writing an essay about the ghost story and what occured so many years ago. Her research makes her discover another side of the story to what actually happened, and that it also involves the family name of one of the school's main benificiaries.

Comments
Swedish horror movies are not the most common thing in the world, and with me being Swedish myself it's of course interesting when movies in this type of genre pops up. Drowning Ghost or Strandvaskaren starts out really good with this cool ghost story to back it up with. Unfortunately they later kinda abandone that concept and it turns into a somewhat lame slasher.

Hellestads Boarding School is a school for brats only, so it's that type of people this movie deals with. Some are ok, but most of them are obnoxious and it's kinda hard to relate to any of them. The actors are ok, some better and some worse than others, but it's totally watchable anyway.

So the story deals with this murders that took place 100 years ago, and it's kinda interesting with the girl writing her essay and uncovers new facts. It's never scary though and it's a shame, since it could've been if they would've done things a bit differently. It's such a good story so it's too bad it kinda goes to waste in the end.

Apart from the ghost story, there's also another story about a girl who commits suicide just in the beginning of the film. The two different stories, if you would say so, connects very nicely so they have to get some credit for that. It of course has a little twist in the end, but it's not that hard to figure out what's gonna go down.

The camera-work is good and the photography is nice, so visually it's well done and pretty interesting. The score consists of typical pop music, so yeah, that sucks. Actually, when some of the songs played in the movie comes on, it sort of feels like you're watching a teen flick and that sucks too.

Final Comments
The first hour or so is both good to watch and interesting. After that it kinda turns into a bit of a Friday the 13th ripoff, and it's too bad since Strandvaskaren has a lot of potential in the beginning. The old ghost folklore is a really cool thing, but unfortunately they pretty much managed to ruin that. It's a cool concept, and it's totally watchable but in the end is doesn't deliver.

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Drowning Ghost

ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Strandvaskaren
MOVIE YEAR: 2004
DIRECTOR: Mikael Håfström
WRITING CREDITS: Mikael Håfström, Vasa
GENRE: Horror, Thriller
CAST: Rebecka Hemse, Jenny Ulving, Jesper Salén
COUNTRY: Sweden
RUNTIME: 100 min

RATING: 4/10

Drowning Ghost Website/IMDB Click here
Drowning Ghost Trailer Click here

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