In 1944 Ukraine, the survivors of 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking are fleeing the Soviet Red Army when a platoon partly consisting of Swedes escapes the slaughter. Seeking shelter in an abandoned cabin, when darkness falls they encounter a vampire attack from a hidden crypt underneath. Now, in present-day Sweden, doctor Annika (Petra Nielsen) and her daughter Saga (Grete Havneskold) have just moved to remote Lappland, so Annika can work with famous Swedish geneticist Gerhard Beckert (Carl-Ake Eriksson). Saga soons makes friends at school with mysterious goth girl Vega (Emma Aberg), who invites Saga to a house party at her DJ friend John's (Niklas Gronberg) place, on the night of a fateful dawn. After fellow partygoer Sebastian (Jonas Karlstrom) steals some pills from the hospital he and Annika work at, they do the rounds (no pun intended) there and soon turn every taker into quite a spin.
This is because unbeknownst to everybody, Beckert, who made the pills, is the last survivor of the 1944 massacre, along with a child vampire named Maria (Aurora Roald). After bringing Maria to Sweden intending to find a cure for vampirism, Beckert's greed and Nazism slowly got the better of him and he became committed to breeding a vampiric master race. His latest effort for this involves making and distributing pills containing Maria's blood. Now, as teenagers scoff them down (along with booze and other drugs) at a party while dawn breaks, Saga is caught terrified right in the centre, and must find some way to escape.
This is because unbeknownst to everybody, Beckert, who made the pills, is the last survivor of the 1944 massacre, along with a child vampire named Maria (Aurora Roald). After bringing Maria to Sweden intending to find a cure for vampirism, Beckert's greed and Nazism slowly got the better of him and he became committed to breeding a vampiric master race. His latest effort for this involves making and distributing pills containing Maria's blood. Now, as teenagers scoff them down (along with booze and other drugs) at a party while dawn breaks, Saga is caught terrified right in the centre, and must find some way to escape.
The first vampire movie ever made in Sweden, Frostbite (2006) is a deliciously ghoulish horror comedy. Director Anders Banke and producer Magnus Paulsson had been seeking to make a Swedish horror movie for years to no avail, until they received a script Daniel Ojanlatva had worked on since 1998 and finally something clicked. And they sure as hell made it ultimately count. Banke visualises it with breakneck energy and has fun with the deliberately hokey special effects while providing a few legitimately tense moments, Ojanlatva's screenplay provides many very funny one-liners and knowing intertextual references while using likeable teen characters (besides the unhinged John) to guide us through the plot, and the cast are all useful and charismatic. There is also a very natural, appropriate soundtrack, consisting of chart hits and a well-balanced score. Best of all for a horror flick, the blood and gore are fucking free-flowing. This is one kind of Frostbite I hope can't be treated.
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