Valley of Shadows (4 Stars)

This is the 22nd Film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

The six-year-old boy Aslak lives in a house on the edge of a forest in Norway. The area is sparsely populated, and his only friend is Lasse, a few years older than him, the son of a nearby shepherd.

Sheep have been killed recently. The shepherds don't think that a normal animal has killed them, because they haven't been eaten. They say that they've been killed for fun. They suspect that a werewolf has killed them, but they don't want to start a panic, so they tell people a wild dog has killed them. Lasse tells Aslak the truth.

Aslak's dog disappears, so he goes deep into the woods looking for him. He finds a cabin inhabited by a mysterious stranger, who invites him to stay for the night.

The film excels because of its dreamy atmosphere. It's a slow moving film in which almost nothing happens. It's questionable whether it should be classified as a horror film. There's talk about werewolves, but we never see any.

This film is in complete contrast to "Prospect", which I watched yesterday. "Prospect" bored me because it was too slow. "Valley of Shadows" is even slower in its pacing, but the atmosphere fascinated me.