Shopping Tour (2012) Review

Synopsis

A group of Russian tourists go on a shopping spree to the neighboring Finland – only to be attacked by the Finnish cannibals.

Shopping Tour Good Points

• There’s something very relatable about the whole setup, people literally travelling across borders just to buy cheap stuff – it sounds ridiculous but also exactly like the sort of thing humans would absolutely do without question.
  
  
• The bus section at the start actually works in its own frustrating way – it feels cramped, noisy, and annoying, but also very real, like you’re stuck on a long journey with strangers you already regret being near, and I am sure we have all been there!
  
  
• The mother and son dynamic is easily one of the strongest parts of the film, where they constantly argue, snap at each other, and get on each other’s nerves, but underneath all that noise it still feels like a real family relationship.
  
  
• Once things kick off, the film jumps into THE chaos properly fast, and that sudden shift from boring travel drama to full violence actually hits harder because of how long it takes to get there.
  
  
• The violence itself is rough, messy, and fairly effective for a low budget film, and there’s no hiding behind darkness or cheap tricks, it just throws everything at you in a very direct way.
  
  
• The practical effects genuinely hold up better than expected – blood, injuries, and all the nastier moments feel tangible enough to make you wince.
  
  
• There’s a dark sense of humour running through the whole thing that worked for me, with characters saying completely absurd things while everything is falling apart adds a strange layer of comedy.
  
  
• Some of the dialogue in panic moments feels very real, like people saying stupid, half broken thoughts under stress instead of clean movie lines.
  
  
• The mother is easily the strongest performance of them all, and she holds a lot of scenes together.
  
  
• There’s a nice contrast between the boring everyday travel complaints and the sudden extreme violence, and that contrast keeps things interesting even when the pacing dips.
  
  
• It never feels embarrassed about what it is, as it fully commits to being a messy low budget horror film, and that confidence actually helps it a lot as well.
  
  
• The general tone of exhausted people trying to deal with ridiculous situations makes it feel different from more polished, predictable horror setups.
  
  
• I appreciated that it doesn’t waste time pretending to be more serious or meaningful than it is, it just gets on with being loud, violent, and strange.

Shopping Tour Bad Points

• The found footage style does get fairly exhausting pretty quickly, as the shaky camera is so aggressive at times that it becomes hard to follow what is actually happening.
  
  
• There are moments where the camera work crosses from “chaotic realism” into “I have no idea what I’m looking at anymore”.
  
  
• The classic found footage logic problem is very present, nobody ever stops filming even in situations where any normal person would have thrown the camera away and run.
  
  
• Even though overall I liked the mother-son dynamic, I have to also say the son is genuinely at times too, probably on purpose to be fair, but there were scenes where I just wanted him to stop talking entirely.
  
  
• The ending felt far too abrupt, and the final shot also feels too disconnected from the rest of the film’s style.
  
  
• While the low budget is part of the charm, it does show in places where scenes feel slightly rough or undercooked.

Final Thoughts on Shopping Tour.

While it’s occasionally hard to follow, Shopping Tour does commit fully to its concept and delivers enough chaos at times, but the rough edges are easy to notice.

Shopping Tour Trailer
Shopping Tour on IMDB
Watch Shopping Tour