This heavily praised Euro-slasher is essentially an Austrian riff on I Know What You Did Last Summer. Taken at face value it’s a competent, well handled effort. If you’re expecting great things however, think again.
It’s graduation and Nina and her friends plan to celebrate by getting trashed. Starting the party early with some drink-driving on the way home from school, the group hit a deer. Later that day Nina receives a text informing her that she will be dead in 3 days. She laughs it off and heads out to the grad party but when her boyfriend goes missing, she finds his phone in the piss soaked bogs and sees he’s had the same text. Alerting her friends to Martin’s disappearance and the mysterious text, the rest of the group divulge that they’ve all received the message but thought it was a prank. When Martin’s body is found the next day, the group begins to fear for their safety and with good reason.
Dead in 3 Days is a well shot, old-fashioned slasher movie that has probably received praise due to a few things. Firstly the setting is both refreshing and realistic. None of the characters live in grand mansions and the graduation celebrations couldn’t be any further from the lavish bash the teens attended in the Prom Night remake if they tried (as evidenced by my reference to the piss soaked bogs above). Secondly, in a nice twist, the main girl is almost the second murder victim (but a further twist prevents this). Thirdly, there’s only a small group of main characters and only a few of them die. By following a simple back to basics formula, the filmmakers ensure that if nothing else, the film is pretty realistic.
OVERALL SUMMARY
I expected this to be far better than it invariably was but it’s still a good film and well worth a look if you’re a slasher fan. It is very similar to the I Know series but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
