I came across this book while looking for resources with which to write a chapter on the Finnish horror film Sauna. There's no focus on that film here, but the book was so interesting I found myself reading it anyway! And in doing so, have added a few more horror films to my want-to-see list.

I find ecohorror fascinating anyway, but I've never really considered it in nationalist (or, in this case, regionalist) contexts before, bar some rather shallow observations on the genre in question. I certainly hadn't considered it in a Scandinavian setting, which is unsurprising as - apart from a brief summer picking strawberries in Denmark - I've never been there. I live on the other side of the world, actually, but even so the cultural presentation of the Nordic countries as outdoorsy, environmentally-friendly communities has percolated its way through my brain anyway. Bigelow takes this apparently widespread belief and explores how Nordic ecohorror films undermine that perspective in various ways. Occasionally he does wander a little too far into eye-glazing theory for my taste - as in the discussion of mesh and meld in Midsommar - but the lucidity of the chapters on Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre and Shelley, especially, make up for it.