Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (2009)

HARPOON: THE REYKJAVIK WHALE WATCHING MASSACRE is billed as Iceland's first horror film and their answer to THE Texas CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, with the action shifted to an inhospitable landscape and a ship. Unfortunately, it turns out to be as dull-witted and laughable as many a Hollywood slasher sequel, a film that strives to be horrific and entertaining and yet which ends up a mess.The first half of the film sets up the cast, which is fair enough, but it doesn't help that most of the characters are intensely irritating (with the exception of the black guy and the Japanese girl). Gunnar Hansen pops up for a worthless cameo, but after that we're mired in a mess of horror film clichés and predictable death sequences. It's all badly written and quite badly directed, two things which sap enjoyment from the production.One thing HARPOON does have going for it are some explicit gore sequences, although these aren't quite as grisly as you'd expect, with the emphasis being on the staging of each effect rather than going all-out to gross-out the viewer. But such moments aren't enough to save what is another forgettable, lamentable horror yarn.

Are You people kidding me?I watched this piece of crap because Chiller Channel mentioned it for 2 months.It sucked. Period! No arguing. Just plain bad!They get on the whaling boat all 7 of them and don't group together to attack the lame killers. And the whole "Your father was a kamikaze" so load up for a suicidal attack was stupid. This movie sucked in so many ways, it wasn't even funny bad, just bad. I can't believe the number of positive reviews for this piece of crap. You guys must've liked Blair Witch Project, another non-scary piece of crap.Avoid this movie, it will only give you a headache and 2 hours you can't get back.

There aren't many horror films from Iceland; however, this one is a very good start. "Harpoon" has all the great elements of a horror film, despite its less than stellar subtitle "Whale Watching Massacre." The director chose all the right performers to bring the characters to life; each actor did a great job at owning the person they were portraying; however, the director left much to be desired in the action department...and the film could've done without the few gasps of ironic comedy with the character Endo and the matriarch of the insane clan. Overall, the gore effects were good and a few surprising moments that the audience may not suspect. I really despised the ending because it disabled me from taking the film seriously overall, meaning the ending was too campy for this type of film. Kudos again to the actors who performed very well.

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.