12 Days in December: Foreign Folk Horror

The White Reindeer (1953)
***** (5 out of 10 stars)
Directors: Erik Blomberg
Producer: Erik Blomberg
Starring: Mirjami Kuosmanen, Kalervo Nissilä, Åke Lindman

“A witch can change her shape. So can love.” – The Shaman

The Review:

Come closer, friends, and let me guide you through a landscape of ice and folklore, to the distant, snow-swept world of The White Reindeer. For some time, I resisted this particular journey. The prospect of a subtitled horror film, much like a subtitled comedy, filled me with a certain unease. Timing, you see, is a delicate instrument, and the act of reading can often disrupt the precise rhythm of fear. However, the allure of a frigid tale involving reindeer proved too powerful to ignore, and so, I relented.

Filmed in 1953, this picture moves at a pace that can only be described as glacial. The concerns over subtitles, as it turns out, were entirely unfounded, for there is precious little dialogue to be had. In this quiet, desolate expanse, the film plays out much like a silent feature, but devoid of the exciting, exaggerated melodrama (which I love) that so often accompanies that form. The story is told not through words, but through the stark, haunting beauty of the Finnish Lapland, a character in its own right.

The narrative follows a young woman who, desperate for love, seeks the aid of a shaman and finds herself transformed into a vampiric, shapeshifting creature—a white reindeer that lures hunters to their doom. The tale is complete, yes, a folk horror story that begins, unfolds, and concludes. Yet, I must confess, the story itself is a rather sparse meal. It is a simple, basic fare that, while competently served, is hardly hearty enough to sate a true horror appetite. It lacks the rich, complex flavors that one might crave from a more substantial cinematic feast.

There are no great shocks here, no startling thrills that will leave you breathless in the dark. Instead, the film offers a quiet, creeping sense of dread, a feeling of ancient magic stirring beneath the endless snow. The visuals are striking, the folklore is intriguing, and the central performance by Mirjami Kuosmanen is hypnotic in its melancholy tragedy. These are the elements that offer some small measure of reward for your time.

Would I recommend you go out of your way to seek this picture out? I cannot say that I would. It is a cinematic curiosity, a relic from a different era of storytelling that may appeal to those with a particular taste for slow, atmospheric folk tales. If you happen upon it during a long winter’s night, you may find some merit in its quiet, snowbound horror. But do not expect a feast; this is but a small, cold morsel from a time long past.