October Horror Movie Challenge: Draug (2018)

This one was interesting. I was looking for a movie about one of my favorite topics, the last stand of Paganism against the rising tide of Christianity.  I was looking for something with witches, or even vampires.  If it was Swedish or Norwegian even better.  I was rather pleased to find this one.  It is in Swedish, so that is another language that I can add to my list this month.

Draug (2018)

In the 11th century, a missionary goes missing in the forests and Hakon (Ralf Beck) and his fosterling Nanna (Elna Karlsson) who is on her first mission.  They travel with the local Lord and Sherif Kettil (Thomas Hedengran), who feels a little like a Viking Lord of old.   We are told that there is something "old and evil" in the forests.

Kettil would like to torture all the villagers he encounters to get them to tell them where the missionaries are, later revealed to be a bishop, but Hakon, formerly "Hakon the Terrible" convinces him they don't have to. 

They travel through the dark Ödmården forest in Hälsingland on Sweden's east coast when they are attacked by bandits. The normal, human, kind, but it is still a horrific battle.  

While torturing one of the captives Nanna thinks she sees a body that later moves.  She then notices carrion birds that lead them to the dead bishop.

During the night Odd, one of the party that was wounded, is woken up by what looks like a dead body.  It attacks him and Deja, Kettil's slave and healer, sees it and screams. 

The Draugr attack in the night and kill most of the group leaving only Kettil, Nanna, Gunder, and Kol. They try to leave by a boat they find, but Kettil attacks Nanna thinking she is the witch that summoned the draugr.  Nanna has figured out how to stop the draugr and wants to try before they leave.  She enters some sort of trance where she is confronted by a witch (Lina Hedlund), who may or may not be her real mother. 

Nanna stays in the trance till dark. Gunder tries to wake her, and get everyone onto the boat. But he is killed by a draugr.  The boat capsizes leaving only Kettil and Nanna.  He kills Nanna, but only to late does he discover she isn't controlling the draugr and they kill him. 

In the post-credits scene we see Kol survive the boat wreck and he swims to shore.

Not a bad flick with some good scares, but the plotting could have been a little tighter.

October 2021
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