Berserker

The first 70 minutes of this supposed backwoods slasher feature no slasher to be found, instead only showing closeups of screaming peoples' bloody faces & a few random shots of a very clearly not killer bear meandering around. A cheap, misguided low (or no) budget production, this offers next to nothing beyond a little unintentionally hilarious dialogue & a script that very much thinks its more clever than it is. It's not awful enough to be a total dud, but it's hardly a hidden gem.

The "berserker" shows up sometime in the last 10 minutes of this boring 80's trash, before we see that though we are treated to a bunch of scaredy teenagers running around the dark, misty woods and footage of a bear wandering around a forest-area.

With a killer premise, and an awesome cover, I was convinced that this would be pure 80's trash/gold. You might doubt me, wondering how you could screw up a slasher where the killer is a supernatural viking, and the answer is by replacing him with a bear for most of the movie. It just blows my mind that someone thought that was a good idea, hell, a viking helmet, a fake sword, and some body paint would have been cheaper too. Drinking drain cleaner would have been more pleasant than this garbage.

Low production values and some bad acting are balanced with decent characters. The pedestrian directing and terrible score and sound effects were harder to over look. We don't get much fun here aside for seeing a bear run around and having a ghost viking hinted at for most of the movie. There are a few kills but they are pretty lackluster. This isn't terrible but it could easily have been much better.

Teens going on Vikation, and getting slaughered. It was so boring, I bearly survived.

A tame, amateurish snoozefest.

bad movie

IMO a bit underrated as far as late-80's slashers go. The viking backstory seemed ridiculous beforehand, but it actually worked quite well. The whole 1st half is pretty entertaining and sets up the characters and utilizes the filming locations effectively. There's also one steamy love scene to spice things up. The 2nd half contains too much wandering in the woods, characters getting constantly lost and doing stupid decisions. Heavy metal soundtrack is cheesy but works well for the film.