This Icelandic film is a much better movie than the title suggests. In fact the title is a lurid and stupid one. The original title is closer to the truth. (promoted in Iceland as "Tryllir" meaning something between Thriller and Horror) More a Thriller than a straight up slasher film, it is well acted and has the grace to add some truly interesting moments into the mix: a girl suddenly getting on a ship's intercom and singing IT'S SO QUITE when a character dies in a freak accident, a mousy Japanese tour guide becomes Ninja smart, and a black, gay man ascends to be a true action hero. It is also shot well.However, the ending twists are highly confusing, illogical and unsatisfying. You find yourself saying "WTF?" a hell of a lot in the last 20 minutes, where characters suddenly shift motivations with no apparent reason just to satisfy the public's stupid need for stupid twist endings. I do appreciate that most of the bad guys (a racist whaling family) get it worse than their victims and that the violence and gore, while brutal and bloody, is not overly extreme or pandering. (but only in the R-rated version, the uncut version is gorier) To me though, that ending translates to: doesn't matter if you are a good person; brave, strong, sympathetic to other humans, or that you have been through a lot already BEFORE the psycho family decided to hunt you down, you will still most likely die and greedy people who weren't good people will get away alive. It may be life, but it ain't entertainment in the Book of Jaimes.

Firstly, DO NOT believe the reviews that say this is a Texas Chainsaw rip off!There are marginal obtuse references to Chain, but this story is really unique in itself. And it's a powerhouse of a rendition. The Icelanders all seem to despise the "greenpeace" tourists who have turned their whaling days into wussie watching days.Not sure however why there is a undercurrent mention of the US, when most leftie greenpeace folks are not American! Nonetheless the good guy and the bad all seem to hate them.The whale watching boat can't find whales and comes upon another vessel after being disabled. This other crew promises to save the. It's then that the fun starts.It's a tensely directly film that commands your attention and the multiple languages spoken add a sense of realness. It's a relatively short running time of 1:23 but keeps your attention.There's a couple of out of place blips along the way that detract, but if you can over look them, you get a really fun ride.

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.