Dead in 3 days (2006)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A Masterpiece!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A close-knit group of young adults become the target of a mysterious killer in a peaceful mountain lake hamlet. After receiving an ominous text message on their cell phones, the group starts to get bumped off by their stalker one by one. Directed with smooth assurance and real thrilling amped-up style by Andreas Prochaska (who also co-wrote the compact and efficient script with Thomas Baum), with a firm grounding in a certain bleakly plausible workaday reality, a steady pace, sharp and energetic cinematography by David Slama, a strong feeling of pervasive dread, brutal murder set pieces which are staged with genuine skill and flair (a ferocious sequence with one lass having her throat cut with glass and her head subsequently lobbed off rates as the definite gruesome highlight), a grimly serious take-no-prisoners tone, a moody skin-crawling score by Matthias Weber, a substantial amount of clammy suspense, a vivid depiction of the dreary small town setting, a potent and provocative central message on how dire consequences from past bad events can and eventually will come back to haunt you, a bang-up lively rock soundtrack, and even a decent smattering of bare female skin, this fright film overall sizes up as a surprisingly sturdy, absorbing, and effective little opus. The sound acting from the attractive and appealing cast helps a lot: Sabrina Reiter as the spunky, no-nonsense Nina, Julia Rosa Stockl as the frightened Mona, Michael Steinocher as the hunky Clemens, Nadja Vogel as the foxy Alex, Laurence Rupp as the sensitive Martin, Julian Sharp as freaky oddball Patrick (in a nice and unexpected twist, Patrick turns out to be more heroic than villainous), and Andreas Kiedl as earnest police officer Kagler. Recommended viewing for slice'n'dice fans.

A man hangs himself. Five youths, just graduated from school, hit a deer while celebrating in exhilarated spirits, while driving down the road in their SUV. A tragic incident involving a kid who drowned after falling through a fragile sheet of ice due to the attempt at securing a puck while playing ice-hockey with five other children. A warning to the five high-schoolers who put the deer out of it's misery that they will die in exactly three days. All these plot elements converge by the film's end, establishing the motive for why a mysterious predator is targeting the young adults just fresh out of high school, exasperated at surviving and optimistic about the future.The film's setting(..a city surrounded by giant, snowy mountains and water)is beautiful, the camera-work striking, and the acting good. But, the film treads familiar waters and the story-line isn't even remotely original. The killer wears a black slicker and leather gloves, there's a brief amount of nudity, and a bit of graphic violence(..one murder sequence, featuring a victim's head immersed in a fish take, her throat tearing into the sharp edges of the aquarium, is particularly grisly)which might please slasher fans, because Dead in 3 Days features the familiar aspects all too common in the genre. The conclusion has annoyingly stupid behavior by the three remaining principles(..not excluding a really dumb decision of a younger sister to one of the group who follows after them)who up and decide to return to the lake house where the first victim was found tied to a rock used to hold him underwater. This lake house is of major importance to the plot for it pertains to the dead kid whose father was so grief-stricken he decided to take his own life. A blatantly obvious red herring is provided, but I have a feeling his dismissal from the plot won't surprise anyone. How the three remaining survivors aren't able to defend themselves against the killer who stands idle in this cold-blank trance-like state is really rather contrived. Obvious influences include One Missed Call(..the foreboding text message to those targeted)and I Know What You Did Last Summer(..youths involved in the accidental murder of an innocent).

**SPOILERS** Not all that bad slasher movie from Austria that has the added attraction of the breath taking photography in and around the little town of Ebensee and Lake Traunsee where most of the action in the movie takes place.The horror starts just after a number of friends graduated from high school and are about to go on their long awaited summer vacation. Getting a text message on their cell-phones telling them that they have only three days to live looked like a sick joke at first. It's when Martin, Laurence Rupp, disappeared from a local disco where he and his friends including his girlfriend Nina, Sabrina Reiter,were dancing the night away that the sick joke became a stark reality.Going to see the police Nina is told by the top, and what looks like only, cop in Ebensee Kogler (Andreas Kiendl), who just happens to be Martin's brother, that he probably got himself drunk and shacked up with a girl he met at the disco. As it later turned out Martin was knocked unconscious, when he was in the disco's mens room, and dumped in the middle of Lake Traunsee where he ended up drowning with a concrete weight attached to his legs!This was repeated later in the movie when Nina was also knocked out cold, from behind, and was about to share the same fate that her boyfriend Martain did. A blooded and battered Nina ended up escaping with the help of fellow student and #1 suspect in Martin's murder Patrick, Julian Sharp, who ended up taking her place: In being murdered by Nina's hooded assailant. It was during her confrontation with her would be killer that Nina got a good look at him and realized who he was. And with that Nina also came to realize why he was so determined to murder her and her friends and at the same time have Lake Traunsee become their final resting place and watery grave!Unlike most US slasher movies "Dead in 3 Days" refrains from having the teenagers in it look and act as if their totally unaware of why their being targeted by their unseen killer. In fact it was Nina, not the local police, who soon realized why she and her friends were being stalked and hunted down. This was all about something that happened some ten years ago on of all places a frozen Lake Traunsee. The movie also kept the blood letting, so important in US slasher film, to a minimum. In the one scene that the movie did resembled US slasher movies-in the savage attack on Alex played by Nadia Vogel-it was as horrific, if not more so, then any you would see in movies like "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" and any of its some dozen sequels.***SPOILERS*** The surprise ending of "Dead in 3 Days" was in fact a lot like the ending in the original "Friday the 13th". As it soon turned out the killer was totally unknown to those of us watching the movie until he, or she, made his first appearance at the very end of the film!

The best thing about this flick is the Austrian dialect, which makes the movie for a native Austrian much better. Most of my Austrian friends love this movie and i think the dialect is too difficult to understand for German people, which are commercialized by teenie-shockers likes Scream, Black X-Mas, I know what you ...As I mentioned in the paragraph above Germans maybe don't understand the people speaking because of the dialect and therefore they rate this movie badly.Sry for ma bad English^^ In Short: One of the best Austrian movie productions... great flick!