Frostbite

Title: Frostbite
Rating: 3.5/5
Genre: Horror, Comedy
Starring: Petra Nielsen, Grete Havnesköld, Carl-Åke Eriksson
Director: Anders Banke
Language: Swedish

Is it like "30 Days of Night?" Or is it another "Twilight?" This is the sort of question that every vampire flick gets asked these days, and despite pre-dating them both, the closest answer is that it's actually a little bit of each. Vampires are probably the most common mythical creature employed by horror films, except perhaps zombies for the perceived lack of thought required to make a zombie flick (not if you dont want it to be shit dumbass!) because of the versatility they can represent. The mysterious entity living in the shadows, hiding from man but plaguing us without our knowledge. It's this that keeps vampire films alive and this that you'd think might have something to do with this films creation. But no, this is far too much fun for that. Set in the arctic northern wastelands of Sweden, where the month of darkness reigns and vampires can come out to play, and where better than at a high school, taking advantage of all the pretty high school girls? When the new girl, Saga, is forced to move to this town in the middle of nowhere by her mother hoping to study under the guidance of a brilliant geneticist. Fortunately Saga is quickly shown around and invited to a party by new goth friend Vega; a party to end all parties. Well she was certainly right about that...

It's nothing if not a spectacularly ambitious effort from the Swedes, doing for vampires what Dead Snow managed for zombies, and what may appear to be a budget film to many is actually the most ambitious effects work the country's done to date. There is more blood pumping out, more CGI and more prosthetics used in this film that a small number is bound to feel unrealistic by Hollywood standards, but this is part of what makes it fun. The fact it's unrealistic at times makes otherwise ordinary moments look cheesy and hilarious, and the whole film panders to that, coming across as gloriously camp without resorting to dousing the cast in glitter. There's glorious gore, albeit often sometimes a little uninspired, slapping blood in creativities stead; the teenagers actually behave like teenagers and not like actors in their mid-thirties or lovestruck morons; and more than a handful of jokes that make their mark.

There are a lot of aspects this film handles well, but it at times feels a touch confused as to what it wanted to be. The comical lines - outside of the occasional accidentally bad appearance of the effects - are sporadic enough to feel closer to the witty lines of an action film than something more integral, yet the horror aspect which seems to dominate often feels a little light on the actual horror. Despite a large cast of attractive Swedes, theres no nudity whatsoever, which i thought was half the point in casting adults to play teenagers, and nothing in the script ever comes closes to feeling shocking. The best I can compare it to is those so called 'horror' flicks that get a 12 rating; if there was anything even remotely horrific here it's long since been removed. The result is that this film feels just a little pointless, and ends far too abruptly, but as a fun film to watch with friends (assuming you have friends who don't make arguments like 'why would I pay to read?' when you mention it has subtitles) and throw popcorn at, it'll hold up pretty well. Frostbite is defiantly a thought free zone...