Macabre…ish Horror Review: Frostbite

Frostbite aka Frostbiten, 2006/ 98 min

In WW2 a group of nazis got separated from their unit, lost and seeking shelter the find a recently abandoned cabin. In the middle of the night it occurs to them that they saw no signs of people having left the cabin. And noticed one of their comrade’s is dead. A woman suddenly attacks and grabs one by his neck and scurries up the wall.

Upon close inspection of the cabin they find a large cellar and in that cellar, a man’s gnawed remains and a box, inscribed with the name Marie. A hole has been dug to bury it. There is growling and the nails are being worked out of the frame, from the inside of the box.

Sixty years later a doctor, Annika (Petra Nielsen) and her daughter, Saga (Grete Havnesköld) arrive in Sweden to work with a professor, Gerard Beckert (Carl-Åke Eriksson). And immediately people are killed in violent attacks. At an autopsy, Dr. Beckert puts a stake through the corpse’s heart showing what he already knows.

Saga is immediately set upon at school by Vega (Emma Åberg), she is intense, aggressive and decides she and Saga are friends. She invites her to a party and to look at dead bodies.

Later, a medical student steals two red capsules meant for a patient in a coma and takes one. His senses become acute and he is able to communicate with pets and…eat them. Crosses are scary and holy people and garlic cause him to smoke. (Like a ham, not cigarettes.) He is soon ill and insatiably thirsty.

Dr. Beckert is discovering that he can’t control his experiments and keep it from spreading, when he knocks out Annika who was bitten by his coma patient. And it turns out that Beckert has a lot of secrets and they began in Germany during the war. And he has a plan that he hopes includes the Nobel Prize.

His secret project will spread out of control when those little red capsules are introduced to a punch bowl at a teen party.

This is a Swedish horror comedy and it is more horror than comedy, it’s very bloody and gory with moments of comedy. The cinematography and physical effects are good. Even the vampire transformation CG is pretty good, the contacts, not so much though. The pacing is good and the ‘moments’ are spread out more or less evenly. The story is also fleshed out well and makes sense. I really enjoyed this movie!