Dead in Three Days

Colour, 35 mm
Austria, 2006, 95 min
Section: Variety Critics’ Choice

Synopsis

“Anything Hollywood can do, we can do, uh, just as well” seems to be the gauntlet thrown down by Dead in Three Days,” Austria’s first teen slasher movie. One of the hits in Locarno’s Piazza Grande screenings last year… pic piles on the thrills and chills, and manages to turn the country’s usually placid, postcard-pretty landscape into a repository of fear and dread. Shot in cold colors, tightly edited and with effective use of closeup camerawork in the scenes of violence, film moves with a sense of purpose… Use of thick Austrian dialect heightens the feel of sleepy smalltown life, separating pic even from German teen slashers (of which there have been many).