Apparently, this is Sweden’s first vampire movie and based on what I’ve seen, I can only hope they keep making them. Anders Banke is a man with talent and one to watch.

The film opens with a flashback to World War II. Well, it sort of stamps open like Steiner’s boot. Which is a problem. As the opening is done so well, you can’t help but spend the rest of the movie wishing Anders had made an entire World War II movie. Something due to the quality of the movie you resolve with yourself to just a quiet whine of hoping he someday turns his hand to a Horror orientated war movie. Or even just a plain and simple war movie. The man has a flair for it.

I’d almost go out on a limb and say it’s worth watching the film for the opening alone. But it’s not, as ‘Frostbite’ is helped along by a glowing script and some excellent performances. In particular Emma Åberg as Vega.

With twitches of both ‘Near Dark’ and ‘Lost Boys’ and the tag line ‘One month until dawn’ the premise is simple. Annika and her daughter Saga have moved to a town in the far north of Sweden, where Annika is to get work in a hospital. From there, you have a mixture of hospital horror, small town claustrophobia and the new teen at school. As the town is so far north, it suffers from those long sunless winter months. Perfect for vampires, why hasn’t anyone thought of this before, what is wrong with you people?

If I stick to my maxim of never revealing too much about a film in a review, I can say that ‘Frostbite’ manages to competently straddle both elements of black comedy and horror. All the scenes involving small dogs and other furry creatures, whether they talk or not, being particularly stand out.

Have a thing against rabbits? Hate small dogs? Then this is the movie for you.

The special effects work well and the dialogue for the most part is snappy and inventive. Rhino Christ, did I just say snappy? What have I become? Well yeah, there’s not much else to say about this, other than while I found the ending somewhat annoying, whenever the film begins to drag, something happens to pick it back up and push it along. Besides, now I can finally scratch death by garden gnome off my list of things to see.

I think that once Anders Banke has a few more features under his belt and has settled into his stride, we can expect even bigger things from the man. That’s not to reflect anything bad against ‘Frostbite’; I just look forward to seeing what he makes once he has more clout within the industry.

Considering I have no problem with either the sound of the Swedish language or reading subtitles, I’d give this a satisfied for what it is three stars out of five.