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[Blood Snow]
Plot:In 2009, six friends arrive at an isolated cabin to enjoy a long weekend in the snow. An epic snowstorm interrupts their vacation, trapping them on the mountain and resurrecting the haunting ghosts of the Donner Party. But, are they true 'entities' or is it simply 'cabin fever' that brings out their fears and darkness, causing friends to turn against each other as reality deteriorates around them.
Cast:James Kyson Lee,
George Stults,
Robert Michael Ryan,
Elizabeth Brissenden.
My Thoughts:Short but kind of sweet.
Review:"Blood Snow" is an interesting product. The movie doesn't really try too hard or expect to do great things, it just does what it can, because it knows what it is. A likeable and very tangible asset to any horror movie really, not trying to play outside of it's league. The film follows a group of friends who go on one of those camping trips in the mountains. As you all know by now, this is a big horror movie no-no. Camping trips always end in death, carnage, and disaster.
To make matters worse, the films opening scene shows that the cabin where they'll be staying at, sits on the grounds of some bad stuff that went down during the Donner Party way back when. When some quakers turned to cannibalism in order to survive a brutal winter storm. They eventually all died though, killed each other off and ate each other. And now, their spirits haunt and possess the land. But this small detail doesn't stop these six friends.
No sir, after all, trapsing up to a snow-covered mountain in a snowstorm, and having a warm romantic get away inside a cabin is oh so much more important than staying alive. Even though they receive warnings from some of the locals as a tiny bar, not to go up there. In this scene, the most vocal of the locals is played by Michael Berryman, who cameos in this movie probably just to give it some street cred. Beyond him, the only recognizeable face in this film is "Heroes" star James Kyson Lee.
And old-school pop singer Tiffany shows up in this film as well, but hell, who remembers Tiffany? I sure as heck don't. Anyways, once they get to the cabin, the usual crazy shit starts to happen. People start seeing things in the snow, hearing voices and stuff. James Kyson Lee's character seems to be the most subsceptible to these hauntings, and the ghosts slowly begin to wear him down. But the thing to ponder here is, why don't they just get the hell out of the cabin?
Granted, one could say, well, it's a huge snowstorm raging outside. They can't just leave so easily. But they got up there didn't they? And the vehicle they use is one of those all-terrain vehicles built to drive and slosh through snow. So despite all of this weirdness occuring, and even at points where they discover that a bunch of quakers killed and ate each other on the cabin grounds long ago, they all still decide to stay. Now I know you're asking yourself, if all of this stuff happened, why did I like this film at all?
Well, having James Kyson Lee, an Asian actor in the lead role was a good change of pace for starters. I can always appreciate diversity, and JKL is a good actor most of the time. Then there's the characters, they seemed mature, and had mature dialogue. None of this..."dude, lets get wasted and high" stuff. They seemed like real people with real problems, relationship problems, the whole male/female battle of the sexes thing.
The writers managed to pull that off quite well, and any horror film where the characters come off as tolerable young adults, and not annoying brats who wanna screw and smoke dope and drink all the time, is fine by me. Also the directing was great, and really captured the cabin fever-esque scenario, of being trapped inside this cabin with this huge snowstorm happening outside, and the evil that lurks out there with it. The director really captured all of this really well, and gave the film some dark, ominous, and creepy overtones.
It was a really great way to work the scenery and atmosphere into the film. I always have said, any film involving a snowstorm has to sue the storm as a tool to ratchet up the creepiness factor in the movie. "The Thing" did it, and "Dreamcatcher" sort of did it. "Black Christmas" (original and remake), to a lesser extent, pulled it off also. But "Blood Snow" managed to work all of that in really well. While the movie fails to be super scary, it does keep and maintain a modestly high level of insidiousness throughout, and into the third act, where things begin to get violent, and folks start dropping like flies.
The films third act by the way is very well done, and the scenes mostly go unscored musically, and are filmed very tightly, so they come off as realistic and quite effective whenever a character is killed. But the movie doesn't use it's ghosts very well. There is a scene where a quaker carrying an axe slowly approaches Kyson Lee's character as he takes pictures outside with his girlfriend. A scene which mimicks Laurie seeing Michael Myers coming at her in "Halloween H20", and blinking a few times to make him go away.
This scene is similar to that one, and is very effective. Problem is, there isn't enough of that in this movie, and I thought had there been more creepy scenes like that, this picture, which clocks in at bout 80 minutes, could've been much better than it was. "Blood Snow' concludes on a disturbing and twisted note though, the ending is very powerful and ominous at the same time. Definitely leaving question marks, and making you think the survivors might not be survivors for much longer.
While the picture makes some critical errors and mistakes from time to time, "Blood Snow" is still a good effort that does enough things right, and brings some cool new differences to an old formula, thus, it gets by as a decent indie ghost flick.
Positives:Great directing by Jason Stephens, really capturing the snowbound scenario the characters were in. Good cameo by Michael Berryman. James Kyson Lee gives a good performance, and the film boasts some effective scenes of spookiness, and the characters all have tolerable personas. Always a plus.
Negatives:The ghosts are not used properly all the time, and in some cases, are quite underused.
Overall:Two and a half out of four stars.
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