Ship Happens: Harpoon: Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (2009)

Harpoon: Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (Iceland, 2009)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Pihla Viitala, Nae and Terence Anderson

Iceland's first splatter flick definitely lives up to its claim of being Texas Chainsaw Massacre in a boat, but could it be anything as epic? Not exactly, but it doesn't hold out on the gore and blood, a good thing since this film breathes nothing else but that.

A group of foreigners signs up for a whale watching boat ride in Iceland and batch consists of a whale-loving greenie (who's forced to go alone when her friend ditched her to hang out with some other whale-huggers), three English biddies, an African American man and his girl friend (not a typo), a Japanese couple and their assistant, and an annoying French drunkard. The ride gets off with a boring start with no whales bothering to show up in a long while so, hoping to give the tourists what they came to see, their captain radios some nearby whalers for directions to the closest breeding ground. Directions are given and off the whale-watchers go, unknown to these enthusiastic foreigners that they're actually headed to said whalers who aren't hunting whales anymore. They're hunting humans.

With each character flawed and paper-thin, clearly made for the purpose of being disposable meat, Harpoon is the kind of easy slasher flick that's mainly filled with a high and gory bodycount focused on people capable of selfish and evil things (the Japanese assistant and the first mate) or just that are annoying (the French man and the "final girl") getting killed off in very grisly, splattery manner.

Further to prove this point is this movie's take on the villains, a "Fishbilly" family made up of a harpoon wielding psycho-mum, a mentally-slow and hunchbacked little brother who apparently worships "Black Jesus" and "Father der Fuhrer", and the the family's eldest son who is more a decent villain than his little brother but not as vile as their mum; all simply and equally merciless in their enjoyment for hunting humans, but lacking enough creative factors to make them more memorable, thus leaving just as disposable as the people they murder.

That being said, most of the good parts of the film rely on how moody and grueling the atmosphere can get through its grim color themes, functional camera works, and exhilarating scores. The open water setting may not be all that new for a slasher flick, but Harpoon succeeds on breathing a claustrophobic feel with added levels of tension by backdropping it all around a small fishing boat where the killers can easily spot you given you make the wrong move or hide in the worst hiding spots.

Again staying true to its claim of a splatter film, almost no cast is safe from a slaying or two as we have harpoon impalements, a hammer embedded into a forehead, head decimations, and even flaregun burns (just to name a few), some of which aren't even done by the villainous family. You could say the killings here have their similarities with a certain proto-slasher by Mario Bava, A Bay of Blood (1971), with both films no short of victims and, technically, none of them are also all that innocent.

You could say that with all of this chaos, Harpoon is a film not meant to be taken seriously; it's a joke. A big, evil joke on political correctness played on a tune of an "epic" slasher flick where everybody dies and nobody is all-good, setting its sights in breaking all sorts of expectations. It's a hard-sell but you need to be very sharp to get some of its uncomfortable guffaws and morbid humor. With the way it ended and its unpredictable nature, along with a simplicity of a plot that sinks quite more easily than an anvil in still waters, serious horror fans looking for depth and meaning has the option to sail away as far as they could from this one, unless they want something mindlessly funny and grue to pass by. That latter, I guarantee!

Bodycount:
1 male decapitated with axe
1 elderly male gets impaled on a dislodge metal rod
1 female gets a hammer buried into her forehead
1 female her her throat cut with hunting knife
1 male impaled on a shot harpoon
2 females skewered on a harpoon, decimated by explosives
1 female dies from burns
1 male gets a flare gun shot to his eye, dies from burns
1 male decapitated with a thrown hatchet
1 male gets a sniper shot to the head
1 male had his head blown off with shotgun
1 female attacked by a killer whale, drown
1 male found with chopsticks stabbed into his neck
Total: 14