As well as the horror theme, various parts also have pure humour elements, and it is considered a horror/comedy by some newspapers that rated it. The film takes place in a small town in northern Sweden during midwinter, making the environment perfect for vampires—because there are no sunny hours during the dark and cold Nordic winter days.
In present-day Sweden, doctor Annika and her teenage daughter Saga are moving to a town in Lappland, so Annika can work close to the famous geneticist Gerhard Beckert. The polar night has begun, with one month until dawn, much to Saga's dismay.
Saga finds a friend in the enigmatic goth girl Vega, who invites her to a party. Saga decides to go, having nothing better to do. At the local hospital, the medical student Sebastian finds some pills which Beckert has been using to treat a comatose patient. Sebastian thinks the pills are drugs and tries them. Rather than getting high, he starts to develop acute hearing and improved vision, is able to talk to dogs and tormented by extreme thirst. Vega shows up at Sebastian's house to pick up the drugs she paid him to provide for the party. Sebastian tells her he has forgotten to get them, but as Sebastian rushes to meet his girlfriend Cornelia's parents, Vega finds the pills and steals them.
At the hospital, Annika looks after the coma patient, who suddenly bites her. Annika looks to Beckert for aid, but he knocks her unconscious when he realises what has happened. It turns out that Beckert is the last survivor of the massacred platoon who, after a showdown in the cabin, was left the only survivor along with a child vampire named Maria. Beckert brought Maria to northern Sweden with the intention to create a cure for vampirism, but he eventually changed direction to create a new species of human-vampire hybrids. The pills are capsules of vampire blood Beckert has used to covertly spread and study vampirism. Annika manages to free herself and fight off Beckert who turns into a monstrous vampire form. Annika drives a stake into Beckert's heart and runs him over with an ambulance, destroying him.
Vega gives the pills to John - the party host - who consumes a pill. John puts the remainder in a bowl of punch to liven up the party, unwittingly infecting multiple guest including Vega. John eventually turns into a vampire and starts mauling his guests. As others succumb to vampirism, the party turns into a bloodbath. Saga hides in the basement, but is attacked by Vega. Saga manages to escape into the backyard, followed by Vega. Saga impales Vega on a garden gnome, who disgruntledly complains about her undignified death. The police arrive to investigate noise complaints (the neighbours mistake the vampires for drug users), and are soon overrun by the vampires. Saga is driven off in an ambulance as the vampires surround the police. John taunts them by saying Don't worry. This will be over any minute. Dawn is... just a month away!
In the ambulance Saga encounters Maria who tells her that they will be sisters. As Saga looks to the driver seat she sees Annika looking back with red vampire eyes.
The first draft of Frostbiten was finished in 1998. Ander Banke and Magnus Paulsson had been trying to make a Swedish horror film for years but with little success, until a script by Daniel Ojanlatva was sent to them about vampires showing up in Norrland. Daniel Ojanlatva had grown up in Kiruna and thought it was just right to add vampires. Originally the film was set to be a Pulp Fiction-style movie with several stories and characters who went in and out of them. It was going to be called Something Wicked this Way Comes. Pidde Andersson joined the crew and did some work on the dialog and suggested the new title Frostbiten. The movie was mostly shot in Kalix in the winter of 2005 and the board scenes were shot in the Ystad Studios. Anthony Lledo, who had worked with Anders Banke before, was selected to write the score. The producers drew inspiration from vampire films such as The Lost Boys, Fright Night, The Fearless Vampire Killers and Peter Jackson's Bad Taste.
Petra Nielsen was cast as Annika; she was always Banke's first choice for the part. Grete Havensköld, who had starred in Astrid Lindgren films as a child, was cast as Annika's daughter Saga. Per Löfberg had been in the hit romcomHa ett underbart liv and in the cult film Evil Ed and was cast in a then-secret role, and Carl-Åke Eriksson had played small parts in several films and television series was cast as the professor. Most of the cast were selected in open auditions. The film was shot on Kinor cameras.
The producers had trouble finding a Swedish distributor for their film, until Paramount took over the DVD sales after seeing only the 20 first minutes of the film.[2]
In the promotion, mostly through the now defunct Beckert website, moviegoers were deceived that Gerhard Beckert would be the "Abraham van Helsing" of the film.
Special effects
Frostbiten was the most special-effects-heavy film ever made in Sweden at that time, and two companies were employed to handle them. Swedish effect company Fido Film and Ulitka Post, the same team who did special effects for Night Watch. The special effects were delayed as several of the animators were employed for Peter Jackson's King Kong. Ulitka Post created the opening title, removed wires and created the long, physically impossible take in the cabin scene. Fido Film and Kaj Steveman did all the creature design, created the different vampires, animated the talking mouths on the dogs and created the knife stabbings. CGI and practical effects were heavily mixed. The hideous supervampire that appears at the end was played by actor Kristian Pehrsson wearing a full body suit. The suit took over 6 weeks to make and Pehrsson was unable to defecate and to sit down while wearing it.[3] His ears were glued tightly to his head and every inch of his body was covered in the tight foam latex suit. Over 300 fx shots are in the film, which was the Swedish record until Kenny Begins beat the record. Frostbite is currently the second most effects-heavy Swedish film of all time.
Music
The music was composed by Anthony Lledo, conducted by Allan Wilson and performed by the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra who later carried on their Swedish vampire legacy by performing the score of Let the Right One In. An album featuring much of the score is available on iTunes Store. The score was very well received by critics.[4][5][6]Rue Morgue called it one of the most stirring horror soundtracks in recent years.[7]
Missing from the album is Tyomnaja Notch by Leonid Utyosov that is played over the opening credits. The name of the song means "Dark Night". Other than the score the soundtrack is mostly made up of Swedish pop- and rock-music, among those Millencolin, Luleå hardcore punk band Raised Fist, Langhorns, Quit Your Dayjob, Son Kite and then newcomers BWO. Diabolic Scheme by The Hives is played over the closing credits.
The film opened at Gothenburg Film Festival on February 3, 2006. At the Cannes Film Festival, the movie was applauded, and sold for distribution to over 40 countries. According to the producers, and to director Anders Banke, Frostbiten became the first horror movie ever to be screened in North Korea.[8] The movie was a big hit in Russia and launched Anders Banke's career in the Russian film industry.[9] In 2020, Njutafilms released the film in Blu-ray in Sweden.
Reception
In Sweden the film was met with mediocre to negative reviews, with a few exceptions. The movie had average success at the box office in Sweden and seemed to be a failure.[citation needed] After Cannes, Frostbiten was by far the most popular Swedish movie on the foreign markets that year.
Svenska Dagbladet gave the film a 3/6 score and praise the cinematography and special effects.[10]Aftonbladet gave it a 3/5 score, calling it an enjoyable horror film.[11]Expressen panned the film, calling it "a meaningless splatterfilm".[12] Swedish film site Moviemix gave the film a 5/6, but said the film did not deliver the splatter climax he wanted at the end.[13] A reviewer for the site Film Threat wrote, "Ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scream infiltrated the fear-film genre, something's been rotten in Transylvania. Playing horror for winking insider references and juvenile giggles, any real juice has been extracted from the cutting-edge school of cinema that spawned Re-Animator, Dead Alive, and Evil Dead, three brilliant examples of horror that combined ferocious splatter with truly inspired humor. In comparison, Frostbite is too little, too late."[14]Göteborgs Posten gave the film another 3/5 score.[15] as did Cinema and complained over the lack of a true character to the film.[16]Film Forum on the other hand gave it a 4/5 score and cited it as a fresh.[17]
IGN gave it a 7 out of 10 score and said that, despite its shortcomings, it was very entertaining. The reviewer also pointed out that the setting was perfect and commented that the Swedish landscapes provided a wonderful backdrop for the movie's dark subject matter and that it looked beautiful in a very gruesome kind of way.[18]
The reception was better internationally; Bloody Disgusting gave the film 4/5, calling it a masterpiece, saying that the film had a strong cast, great special effects and the film the most enjoyable vampire film since the 80s, filling in: "The way the screenplay is written is fantastic, as you can see above the film has many plants that grow and flourish into one hell of a film".[19] The horror site Eatmybrains.com gave it 4/5 stars and comments: "Banke’s film exhibits a laid back, droll sensibility perfectly in keeping with its national temperament, and has a unique deadpan sense of the comedic that perfectly complements the material without cheapening it".[20]Film4 gave the film 3.5/5, saying that the wartime neutrality of Sweden theme and anxieties about migration (Becket dishonestly sneaking into Sweden and creating a master race) made the reviewer uncomfortable and it took away some of the fun.[21]
Most critics praised Emma Åberg's performance as Vega, saying that she stole every scene she was in. Jonas Karlström also received praise for his part as the unfortunate intern Sebastian and mentioned the scene where the newly vampiric Sebastian meet Cornelia's priest father and is served garlic-braised trout as one of the film's strongest and funniest moments.
Frostbiten won the best film award at Fantasporto and collected the several awards at Screamfest.
Snarkerati ranked this Frostbite as the 43rd best vampire film based on critic rating statistics[22] and on December 26, 2012 IMDb listed Frostbite as the fourth most popular Swedish horror title.
Title
The title is an obvious play on frostbite, because the movie takes place in a frozen environment and has vampires who bite people in it. The original title was Something Wicked This Way Comes (a phrase from William Shakespeare's Macbeth and also the title of Ray Bradbury's 1962 novel and its 1983 film adaptation). The producers liked the title Frostbiten more since it was more international, and by just cutting the last letter they had an English title. Teasers and trailers on film festivals therefore wore the name Frostbite. However, it was only called Frostbite in the United Kingdom. In the United States the movie is called Frostbitten, the exact translation of the original title.
In an analysis of Swedish genre films such as Storm (2005; Swedish title: Tempestade) and Kenny Begins (2009) by Dan Sjöström, Frosbite is discussed in detail.[23] He describes the vampires of Frostbite as representing several different types appearing in the genre; Beckert is in one way the stereotypical mad scientist, but is also a loner vampire in the style of Nosferatu, residing in his castle (in this case the rundown town hospital). He describes the teen vampires as a more sadistic and brutal breed of the undead, an anarchist and aggressive pack straight out of The Lost Boys.
Sjöström notes that, rather than joking away the horror, horror and comedy are wrapped tightly together, as in the scene where Saga walks into the aftermath of the bloodbath and encounters John, who laughs grimly at her with a helium voice, or as in the film's infamous "gnome-scene".
He lays weight on the fact that, while following traditional vampire mythology closely, the film puts it into context with modern Sweden. In the spirit of Swedish secularism, the priest role in the film is reduced. He argues that if the film had been made in a more religious country, the priest would have been a main character, who would have provided information about the vampires and lead the fight against them. Instead, the teens know everything about vampires and are just surprised that they are real, rather than confused what to do. The filmmakers trust that the audience, much like the teens, know about vampires, so that information on how to fight vampires is obsolete. [24]
Sarah Clyne Sundberg of Sweden.se suggested that the film possibly reflected unprocessed Swedish war guilt.[25] She also mentioned that the film had some great visual and verbal puns and described it as good old-fashioned gore fest. Film4 read the film in a similar way, stating: (B)uried somewhere amidst the monstrous transformations and belly laughs is an uncomfortable critique of Sweden's much-vaunted wartime neutrality, and her current anxieties about immigration. For this is the tale of a Nazi soldier finding refuge in Sweden with surprising ease, and continuing unchecked in a eugenics programme of his own (with bloodsuckers as the new master race) - and the locals either fail to notice what's happening in their midst or else fall in line with alarming gusto.
Frostbite is analysed along with Let the Right One In in the book New Vampire Cinema.
Swedish cinema is known for including many acclaimed films; during the 20th century the industry was the most prominent of Scandinavia. This is largely due to the popularity and prominence of directors Victor Sjöström and especially Ingmar Bergman; and more recently Roy Andersson, Lasse Hallström, Lukas Moodysson and Ruben Östlund.
Chris Kobin is a screenwriter and film producer living in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Lledo is a Danish composer.
Screamfest Horror Film Festival is a horror film festival founded by film producers Rachel Belofsky and Ross Martin in August 2001. It runs over ten days during the month of October and is hosted at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Los Angeles, California. In 2015, the festival celebrated its fifteenth anniversary and has been credited as being the largest and longest running horror film festival in the United States. The 2016 Screamfest was from October 18 through the 27.
Jorge Olguín is a Chilean director who works mainly in fantasy and horror.
Méliès International Festivals Federation (MIFF), formerly European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation (EFFFF), established in 1987, is a network of 22 genre film festivals from 16 countries based Brussels, Belgium, and dedicated to promoting and supporting European cinema, particularly films in the fantasy, horror and science fiction genres.
Let the Right One In is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson, based on the 2004 novel of the same title by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay. The film tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a strange child in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the early 1980s.
Drowning Ghost is a 2004 Swedish slasher film directed by Mikael Håfström and written by Lars Yngwe "Vasa" Johansson and Håfström. It stars Rebecka Hemse, Jesper Salén and Jenny Ulving. The film features the film acting debut of Rebecca Ferguson.
The Revenant is a 2009 dark comedy/horror film written and directed by Kerry Prior and starring David Anders and Chris Wylde. The film was shot in Los Angeles, California.
Anders Banke is a Swedish director. He was born and raised in Ystad and developed an early interest in film. He was trained as a director at VGIK in Moscow and learned to speak Russian. There he met his friend and future collaborator Chris Maris. In 1998 he came across a horror comedy script written by Daniel Ojanlatva about a town north of the Arctic Circle being terrorized by vampires. Banke loved the idea and spent several years developing it with Ojanlatva. Since the Swedish Film Institute doesn't often approve of horror films or genre movies in general, Banke had a hard time pulling the film off. In the end, got funding from the Swedish Film Institute needed to attract other producers to the project in 2004 and production could begin. The film was Sweden's first vampire film.
Not Like Others is a 2008 Swedish vampire-drama film written and directed by Peter Pontikis.
Kaj Steveman is a Swedish visual effects supervisor. He was the Founder and head of Fido Film, one of Sweden's most prominent special effects studios and is most known for his acclaimed work on the Swedish vampire films Let the Right One In and Frostbite. He was also visual effects supervisor for Underworld: Awakening and Storm and worked as assistant director in the cult film Evil Ed. He worked as a make-up artist on The Hunters.
Newsmakers is a 2009 Russian action thriller film directed by Swedish director Anders Banke. It is a remake of the Hong Kong film Breaking News by Johnnie To.
Carl-Åke Eriksson was a Swedish actor known for playing the sinister SS vampire in the horror-comedy Frostbite. He also appeared in several other high-profile Swedish productions like The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, Mysteriet på Greveholm and The Simple-Minded Murderer. He was most active at Malmö City Theatre.
Jonas Karlström is a Swedish actor born 3 October 1978 in Karlskrona.
Niklas Grönberg, is a Swedish actor and musician. He developed an interest in the arts during his early teens, being one of the few means of entertainment in his hometown of Pajala. His interest led him to experiment with music, theatre and film. After starring in several short films and working as an extra every chance he got, he was cast as the sadistic and hedonistic vampire John in the horror film Frostbite, leading to international exposure.
Frostbite is the soundtrack to the 2006 Anders Banke film of the same name. The orchestral score was composed by Anthony Lledo and released in 2006 on MovieScore Media.
Eternal Blood is a 2002 Chilean vampire-horror film directed by Jorge Olguín, written by Carolina García and Olguín, and starring Blanca Lewin, Juan Pablo Ogalde, Patricia López, and Claudio Espinoza. A group of vampire enthusiasts become convinced that their subculture has been infiltrated by real vampires.
Chimères is a 2013 horror film and the feature film directorial debut of Olivier Beguin. The movie had its world premiere on July 5, 2013 at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, where it won a special mention for best feature film. It stars Yannick Rosset as a young man that ends up contracting vampirism after receiving a blood transfusion.
Saga Becker is a Swedish actress. Becker is known for her performance as Sebastian in Something Must Break (2014) for which she was nominated for a Rising Star Award at the Stockholm Film Festival in 2014 and won a Guldbagge Award for Best Female Lead Role in 2015.
↑ Banke, Anders (October 6, 2006). "[Konvas] Frosbite (Adam Frey)". Konvas. Archived from the original on April 15, 2013. Retrieved February 7, 2013. I just got back from the Pyongyang International Film Festival, where Frostbite was the first horror film ever to screen in a North Korean cinema! An incredible experience. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a country like no other, and the same goes for their film festival. Frostbite is a horror comedy, more funny than scary, but as the comedy elements are often related to popular culture references not present in North Korea, most of the comedy was sort of lost on them, whereas - due to the majority of the audience never having seen a horror film before - the horror elements certainly got a reaction, with 40 year old party officials screaming like little children...
↑ Sjöström, Dan (2012). Kenny Begins, Frostbiten, Storm: Resultat av åldrande Genrer och Växande Filmproduktion. Gävle: Gävle University College, Akademin för utbildning och ekonomi.
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