When you think of Sweden, you may think of Ingmar Bergman. The auteur director who elevated film from entertainment to art. From now on, when you think of Ingmar Bergman, you may have to think about… Evil Dead!
Currently in production is the Swedish low budget amateur movie Root of darkness (original title; Roten av ondska), a horror drama that is a tribute to the Swedish master Ingmar Bergman (1918 – 2007) – but also to Sam Raimi’s 1981 Evil Dead. The movie combines Bergman’s 1968 Hour of the wolf (aka Vargtimmen) and the splatter classic, and should be ready for the Bloody Weekend festival in Audincourt in France in May this year.
The story takes place in 1977. A historian with Medival times as the field of expertise goes to his cabin to celebrate his 50th birthday. There he finds a box – “and then there are monsters”, we are told.
The 15.000 SEK film (1600 euro / 1700 USD) film stars Katriina Ruottinen, Jesper Danielsson and Hugo Hilton Brown under the direction of Gustav Ljungdahl (a costume designer on ABCs of Superheroes starring, Bai Ling, Uwe Boll, Lloyd Kaufman, Fred Olen Ray and Jörg Buttgereit).
While sounding crazy enough, merging Bergman and Raimi may not be the most far-fetched idea ever. Ingmar Bergman not only dabbled in horror drama, he is also largely responsible for creating the rape-revenge exploitation genre with his Virgin Spring (1960), in which medieval violation and retaliation takes place. Wes Craven was largely influenced by Bergman and his breakthrough movie, The Last House on the Left (1972) was a remake of Virgin Spring.