Frostbiten

After Let the Right One In, I was wary about approaching another Swedish vampire film. Surely it couldn't live up to the brilliance of that master piece. Well, it doesn't. But Frostbiten is a different kind of beast altogether. Frostbiten is a wonderful return to classical vampires. They hate garlic, don't have reflections etc. This lends itself well to the comic tone of the film. Even in a foreign language, this is instantly quotable and memorable. From lines such as "Stop throwing garden gnomes at me!" and a girl making an X rather than a crucifix, we have a film that doesn't take itself seriously, but isn't stupid either. The film does well to split up the adult world and the teen world. The teen world is basically filled with drugs and parties, lending itself as the perfect set-up for a massacre. Meanwhile, the adult world is filled with the backstory and the main plot thrust.The score and soundtrack work in perfect harmony. The film opens during the war, and the score has an eerie Gothic sound which seems as though is should be coming straight from a gramophone. The effects are perfect in my opinion. The mix of CG and make-up is almost indistinguishable. It comes across as an old classical stop-motion piece at times. The whole film was enjoyable in the same way as The Lost Boys. Fun, exciting and hilarious. Only, Frostbiten has talking dogs.

If you're expecting a true horror movie, you'll be disappointed. This movie was hilarious. And that is exactly the way it was meant to be enjoyed, as a comedy horror (along the lines of "Shawn of the Dead"). The storyline that follows the daughter is better developed than the one with the mother, and plays for more laughs. I saw it courtesy of the Seattle International Film Festival, at midnight, with a theatre full of other vampire film lovers. My biggest complaint would be that it does take a little too long for the opening sequence (taking place during WWII, German with Swedish and English subtitles) to be explained. It's also the scariest part of the whole film. If you don't like horror films, this is a great one to see. Rent it and have a bunch of friends over.

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Bad focus from time to time. Lack of creativity.

EDITING: Pretty good considering the cinematography.

ACTING: Various

LIGHTING: Nice but i prefer fog and mist-lighting effects in horror movies.

MUSIC: Very well written and performed. Almost too good to work effectively together with some of the scenes. Gets too melodramatic at times, like the old silent films that scared the crap out the audience a long time ago.

DIRECTING: ?

VAMPIRES: Super nice! Realistic make up and CG.

SCARE: Bad timing in editing and bad choice of camera angles. If the movie tries to make the audience jump out of their seats with fear, we jump with laughter.

HUMOUR: Funny situations appear in the story. Maybe the next Swedish film project.

OPENING SCENE: Boring and not quite convincing.

SCRIPT: Correct thinking in structure but unfortunately, some of the characters feel superfluous. Vampire-Sebastian would be a lot more fun idea for a movie.

OTHER COMMENTS: They have overseen some of the best opportunities to capture beautiful and scary scenes involving white snow, fog and blood. Desipite the fact that the action is taking place in the middle of the cold winter, this wasn't used as a physical problem for the characters. I believe it was much colder for the slow working film crew than what was captured in the final result of the film. Where did all the money go?

This is one of the best Swedish movies ever! It is however not a horror movie, it felt more like a black comedy with some smaller horror elements. The main story is about a girl that moves with her mother to a small town in the north of Sweden, where it is dark 24/7 during the winter. She tries to make friends at her new school, and meets a goth-girl called Vega. Strange things start happening in the town, people are found dead completely drained of blood, without any trace of any killer. Anyway, this is a great movie, it has good effects and good music. The only thing I can really complain about is some of the actors, who reminds me very much of amateurs. Overall however this was a really enjoyable movie, I laughed a lot and so did the whole audience at the theater. I saw it at the Arctic Light Film Festival in Kiruna, February 2006. Great movie!

This movie starts with a flashback. A flashback were they talk German, but evidently you can hear (if you're familiar with the German language), that the actors are not Germans themselves. Just a trivia fact, for the beginning.

Because this doesn't hurt the movie, after the flashback you get to the present time and the movie kicks off. And that means it really get's going! It then starts out more as (teen-)comedy, just to evolve into a horror-comedy. The transition is pretty good and many jokes work, but unfortunately in the end (literally), the movie falls short. It just seems, that they run out of ideas or money ... or both, but this movie does not feel like it's finished. It's a shame then, because this could've been so much better, but it's still good!