Lake of Death (2019): When Movies Can’t Pick a Lane

Look, we’re going to be upfront about this one: Lake of Death is a Norwegian horror film that we watched with subtitles, which already put us at a disadvantage. Reading captions while trying to catch all the visual details and take notes for a review is a special kind of hell. But even accounting for the language barrier, this movie has some serious identity issues.

Lake of Death is a 2019 remake of a 1958 Norwegian film, itself based on a 1942 novel. The story follows Lillian and her friends as they return to her family’s remote cabin a year after her twin brother Bjorn mysteriously disappeared. Naturally, creepy things start happening immediately, because that’s what happens when you return to isolated cabins where loved ones vanished.

Here’s what we’ll give this movie right off the bat: it’s gorgeous. The cinematography is absolutely stunning. The shots of the lake, the surrounding woods, the way they frame scenes underwater - it’s all beautifully done. This is a good-looking film that knows how to create atmosphere through visuals alone.

The problem? Lake of Death cannot for the life of it decide what kind of movie it wants to be.

Is it a supernatural haunting? Maybe. There’s a local legend about a guy named Gruvik who lived by the lake in the 1920s. He became obsessed with the water, just staring at it for hours. His wife got fed up and found a lover in the woods (as one does), so Gruvik slit both their throats, then rowed out to the middle of the lake, tied stones to his feet, and drowned himself. The myth says if you sink to the bottom of the lake, you’ll live forever. Spooky stuff.

Is it psychological horror about Lillian’s trauma and possible psychosis? Also maybe. She’s seeing things constantly - black sludge oozing from walls and sinks, covering people’s bodies, filling her bathtub.

She’s sleepwalking and apparently cooking entire breakfasts in her sleep, which is a skill we wish we had. She’s clearly dealing with grief and guilt over her brother’s disappearance.

Is it a slasher with a living human antagonist? Could be! There are mentions of recent break-ins in the area. People’s phones go missing. The dog gets tied up. Someone smashes the radio. Harold gets dragged into the basement and killed. It could just be some sick bastard messing with them.

Is it her brother Bjorn, alive and hiding in the basement this whole time? Spoiler alert: yes, actually, it’s that one. But the movie spends so much time throwing every possible explanation at you that by the time you get to the reveal, you’re less shocked and more exhausted. Pick a lane, movie. Just pick one and commit.

The film opens with Lillian and Bjorn in a boat. He’s using sign language, she’s speaking aloud. He gives her a locket with both their pictures inside, and there’s this immediate weird vibe between them. It doesn’t feel like normal sibling affection - it feels uncomfortable and invasive on his part. She tells him she has to leave, that she’s going away with Kai. Bjorn does not take this well.

Flash forward a year. Lillian and a group of friends arrive at the cabin. Among them is Gabriel, who studied psychology and immediately volunteers that Lillian lost her twin brother a year ago during his “usual walk in the woods.” The phrasing made it sound like Bjorn only walked in the woods once a year, which was confusing, but whatever. Bernard runs a paranormal podcast and is excited to explore Norwegian folklore. Harold and Sonja are a couple. Gabriel seems to be Lillian’s boyfriend, though that’s not entirely clear at first. Kai picks them up from the train station - they literally get dropped on the side of the tracks in the middle of nowhere with no actual station - and drives them to the cabin.

Right away, things are off. Lillian sees a figure in the upstairs window that disappears when she looks again. Her dog Toto refuses to go near the house, which is always a bad sign. Listen to the dog. Dogs are always right. But no one ever listens to the dog.

The scares start piling up. Lillian sees a figure underwater. She sleepwalks and gets found standing in a corner staring at a wall like something out of The Blair Witch Project. Someone makes breakfast while everyone’s asleep - there’s even an extra plate with half-eaten toast, and no one knows who sat there. Harold wakes up with “DAU” (Norwegian for “dead”) written on his forehead in ink.

Harold gets dragged underwater while swimming with Sonja. Something grabs his feet and pulls him down. He survives, but now there’s this black mark on his chest that Lillian keeps seeing - only she can see it, spreading like dark veins under his skin.

They discover a basement they didn’t know existed. Down there, Bernard finds a journal that belonged to Bjorn. It talks about the lake staring back at him, the handwriting getting progressively more erratic, and the last page is torn out. This should mean something important, right? Nope. Never mentioned again. Just like the letter Bjorn supposedly left behind when he disappeared. Brought up once, never referenced again. Great writing, guys.

The movie keeps setting up red herrings. Is it Bernard staging everything for his podcast? Harold keeps accusing him of that. Is it Kai, who keeps leaving and whose car they find hidden in the woods with blood on it? Is it Gabriel, who has blood on his jacket and acts suspicious? Is it the lake itself, supernaturally influencing everyone? Harold gets killed - dragged into the basement by someone and that’s it for him. Gabriel gets killed too. Kai goes missing. The phones disappear. The radio gets smashed with a hatchet. They’re completely cut off.

And then the reveal: it’s Bjorn. He’s been living in the basement the entire time. He’s been behind everything - the missing phones, the destroyed radio, the murdered friends, all of it.

But here’s where it gets really uncomfortable: Bjorn is obsessed with Lillian in a very not-brotherly way. When he finally confronts her in the basement, he grabs her face, pulls her close, and kisses her. On the mouth. Full tonsil hockey. This is not a sibling relationship - this is deeply inappropriate and the movie has been hinting at this creepy dynamic from the beginning.

The flashback at the end reveals what really happened a year ago. When Lillian told Bjorn she was leaving with Kai, Bjorn became violent. He grabbed her, tried to force himself on her, then started choking her. She hit him with an oar in self-defense, and he fell overboard. She thought she killed him. Apparently she didn’t - he either survived and has been living in the basement going increasingly insane, or the lake did some supernatural shit and brought him back. The movie doesn’t commit to either explanation. The final sequence has Bjorn taking Lillian and Kai out in a boat to recreate Gruvik’s murder-suicide. He’s got a bag of rocks ready to drown them all. Lillian jumps overboard even though she can’t swim and her hands are tied - because that’s definitely going to help. Bjorn jumps in after her, tries to kiss her underwater (dude, read the room), and she stabs him twice before he finally goes limp.

Kai saves her. The survivors - Lillian, Kai, Sonja, and Bernard - end up on the dock. But something’s changed in Lillian. Her whole demeanor is different. She’s staring at the lake with this distant look, and then you see black sludge crawling up her leg, spreading through her veins. Her eyes turn almost completely black. Her dog barks at her because he knows something’s wrong.

The movie ends by showing old photos in the cabin, including what might be Gruvik and his son - suggesting maybe Gruvik did come back from the lake somehow? And then it’s over, leaving you to decide what actually happened.

And that’s the core problem with Lake of Death. It gives you 500 different pathways and 500 different versions of each one. It could have been Bjorn the whole time. It could have been the supernatural lake. It could have been Lillian herself doing everything while hallucinating Bjorn. It could have been any combination of the above. The movie refuses to commit to anything, leaving everything so open to interpretation that it becomes frustrating rather than intriguing. One of us (Dan) liked the ambiguity more, appreciating that sometimes movies don’t need to spell everything out. The other (Talon) found it exhausting - pick something and go with it instead of throwing every horror trope at the wall to see what sticks.

That said, we didn’t hate it. Despite its flaws, there’s something compelling about Lake of Death. The acting is solid - Lillian’s actress maintains this unsettling monotone throughout that could support the theory she was behind everything all along. The underwater sequences are beautifully choreographed, almost like a disturbing ballet. The tension builds effectively even when you can see the scares coming.

The movie also earns points for not falling into the “it’s too dark to see anything” trap that plagues so many horror films. Even in the darkest scenes - like Harold with his magical bright-as-the-sun matchstick exploring in the dark - you can actually see what’s happening.

We’re both giving Lake of Death six cents out of ten. It’s a well-made film with serious narrative commitment issues. If it had picked one explanation - psychological breakdown, supernatural haunting, or living antagonist - and fully committed to developing that story, it could have been great. Instead, it tries to be everything at once and ends up being kind of a mess with really pretty visuals.

Worth watching? Sure, if you’re in the mood for atmospheric horror with gorgeous cinematography and don’t mind an ending that refuses to give you definitive answers. The IMDB reviews were pretty rough on it, and we understand why - it leans heavily on familiar horror tropes and the narrative feels predictable once you recognize the patterns. But there’s something about it that kept us engaged despite its flaws. Maybe it’s the setting, maybe it’s the visual storytelling, maybe it’s just morbid curiosity about how they’re going to explain all this weirdness.

Just don’t expect closure. And definitely don’t go to Norwegian lakes. Or any lakes, really. Lakes are clearly bad news.