Ever since Wes Craven changed the game with his 1990s double-meta-whammy, New Nightmare and Scream, slashers have taken a turn for the more interesting, leaving behind dated tropes and predictable third-act reveals in favor of unexpected genre subversions. One of the finer recent examples of that new tradition is Lake Bodom, the Finnish horror film inspired by the true-life murders that rocked the nation in the 1960s and went on to become an unsolved fascination in the years since.

The film stars Nelly Hirst-Gee and Mimosa Willamo as two high school best friends who abscond to the infamous lakeside campground for the weekend with a couple of their classmates; Atte (Santeri Helinheimo Mäntylä), who's obsessed with solving the murders and Elias (Mikael Gabriel), who's obsessed with slightly more predictable teenage boy things. As you might expect for a film that centers on wayward teens cavorting on corrupted soil, things soon take a turn toward murder, but Lake Bodom has a few tricks up its sleeve along the way that make the film a proud entry in the meta-horror catalogue. It's also a beautifully filmed little slasher, which you can get a taste of in our exclusive clip, which introduces you to our campers just before the ish hits the fan.

Lake Bodom is now available exclusively on Shudder. Watch our exclusive clip below, and for the curious, I've included the full trailer after that.

Here's the official synopsis via Shudder:

Four teens get some scary surprises when they camp out at Finland’s Lake Bodom, the site of a grisly massacre back in 1960. With the killer still at large, the teens have plenty of time to theorize about who might really be responsible and if he’s still out there. Right on cue, when the kids tuck in, footsteps start approaching and a killer emerges. But though director Taneli Mustonen wants you to think you know where the story’s going, he’s got some very clever twists on deck that take the story in an even more shocking direction.

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Image via Shudder