Good concept, poorly executed.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A motley assortment of international tourists venture out into the Icelandic ocean for a whale watching expedition. Things go horribly awry when the group wind up trapped on a barge with a crazed family of murderous lunatics. Director Julius Kemp, working from a crafty and engrossing script by Sjon Sigurdsson, relates the absorbing and twist-ridden story at a brisk pace, builds a considerable amount of nerve-wracking suspense, delivers a pleasing smattering of tasty female nudity and a handy helping of in-your-face brutal'n'graphic gore, and further spruces things up with a wickedly funny sense of pitch-black humor. Moreover, Kemp and Sigurdsson provide a surprising and fiendishly enjoyable feeling of deep-seated misanthropy that depicts the human race as a general whole in a remarkably dim, hateful, and negative manner: The tourists find themselves in jeopardy because of the idiotic actions of an obnoxious French drunk, perky token American Marie-Anne (the fetching Miranda Hennessy) ultimately turns out to be a selfish and unsympathetic bitch, and clever and resourceful sole survivor Endo (splendidly played to the ruthless hilt by Nae) comes across as even more scary, deadly, and disturbing than the family of nutjobs. In addition, Pihla Viitala is strong and appealing as sweet German gal Annette, Terence Anderson as gutsy and noble black gay Leon rates as a genuinely radical and refreshing out of the ordinary hero, and genre icon Gunnar Hansen does well in his secondary role as grizzled old sea salt Captain Petur. The family of psychos are a memorably nasty bunch: Helgi Bjornsson as hulking brute Tryggvi, Stefan Jonsson as depraved hunchback Siggi, and Gudrun Gisladottis as sadistic matriarch Mama. The startling outbursts of ferocious violence and the grim conclusion both pack a really mean punch. Kudos are also in order for Jean-Noel Mustonen's sumptuous widescreen cinematography and Hilmarorn Hilmarsson's rattling score. Good grisly'n'twisted fun.

This might be the first solely Icelandic movie I've ever watched and it's not a bad one, really. It's set in Reyjavik, has an international cast, and is mostly in English. The background story is amusing: A bunch of tourists go whale-watching but are beset upon by Icelandic redneck fishermen who're sore about environmentalists halting their livelihood of whale-hunting. It's a slasher movie but with some welcome black humor. It's also filmed pretty well, with grainy shots for ambiance. I've two issues with the movie, one being the misogynism at the start of the movie. At least the movie shows it's not homophobic, since it has a heroic non-nelly gay man. The other issue is the twists in the story. I have no idea how the movie ended the way it did. It has to do with a certain character who does an about-face in the middle of the movie and changes motivations and I'm not sure why... Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention, I don't know. Anyway, this was a fun and exotic slasher movie.

What a poster! What a title! What a stinking piece of arctic garbage! Simple enough story. Group of unrelated people set off on a whale watching expedition. Something goes awry. Bad family of crazies show up. Tourists think they're being rescued. People start dying. Try to survive. There ya go.What a stinking horrible summary that was, huh!? And I could give a crap! This flick in no way deserves my cognitive efforts, and if you think you're gonna read a review that cares...get ready for a supriseis!!1 I really don't even know where to start. I suppose starting with the good is the best case here...since anything positive was entirely slim-pickings. The make-up and blood effects were impressive. The ending was grim. That's it.The bad...which I forbid to dwell upon, encompassed everything else. The acting was amateur, the writing awful, the use of a Bjork song was appalling, the characters were annoying, and the direction....A word...A word...A word......atrocious. Yes! And the entire movie itself....abysmal! Look at me go, Ma!! To be fair to the entire crew and what not, the productions were indeed slick, but when it came down to telling a solid horror story, it not only dropped the ball, it dropped the ball from the top of the Empire State Building into a pile of steaming Orca excrement. Don't let the positive reviews fool you, or the useful/not useful voting. This movie sucks my ass!

Around twenty minutes into this movie I started to wonder if "Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre" was meant to be a dark comedy. After all, how could this be a serious horror movie when it included scenes such as a traumatised woman singing Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet" over the loudspeakers of a ship whilst a tragedy occurs on the deck? Or the moment in the movie where the scene suddenly changes to a group of people discussing their love for whales? But if it's a comedy, where are all of the scenes designed to make you laugh - or at least smile? It's almost as though the scriptwriter was as confused about the movie they were making as I was about the movie I was watching.Obviously "Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre" is a homage to the far superior "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" - the original Leatherface (Gunner Hansen) even shows up here. However, everything that "Texas" did right, "Reykjavik" does wrong and then some. The victims here are some of the most one-dimensional stereotypes you could ever assemble from the loud, drunk Frenchman to the Japanese tourists with their camera gear, and none of them are particularly sympathetic or appealing. The only exception is a young black American man (portrayed by an actor in serious need of accent training) whose sexuality prompts one of the most unrealistic dialogue exchanges i've heard (and that's before you take into account the fact that this exchange takes place whilst the two characters are running for their lives from insane whalers). I'm not even sure who was supposed to be the main character in this movie which shows how problematic the story was.This already unsteady boat is further sunk by gaping holes in logic which will leave you scratching your head in disbelief. For example, early in the movie we're introduced to a character whose presence seems to indicate that our victims have been lured into a trap. However, their fate actually has nothing to do with him but rather an unfortunate (and highly unlikely) accident. This is indicative of the poorly written script in which strangers suddenly and inexplicably relate their life stories to one another merely for the purpose of giving the audience some back-story, or act out of character to set up a specific plot point (see the crazy sequence of events which begins with the line "Your father was a real kamikaze!" for evidence of this).There is only one death scene that is of any interest and the villains aren't terribly memorable. Whilst it's exciting to see a slasher movie emerge from somewhere other than America, I can't recommend "Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre" due to its many, many flaws. You would be advised not to waste your time and to instead watch a movie like 2006's "Severance" which manages to be both funny and frightening - two things which "Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre" completely fails to be.