The 5 Best Vampire Chillers Set In The Snow
Mary Beth McAndrews
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I love vampires, don’t you? No matter how sexy or monstrous, vampires are fascinating creatures that represent humanity’s own fear of death. While vampires are evergreen and can exist in any season or climate, there’s something terrifying about them in the snow. Frigid temperatures don’t bother them, which is disorienting when they look just like people. They are us and they aren’t. It creates a cognitive dissonance that makes your mind seize up in fear. There aren’t a ton of winter-set vampire movies, but the few out there are gross, fun, and perfect to pop on during the next snow storm.
30 Days Of Night
David Slade’s 2007 vampire masterpiece 30 Days Of Night is the quintessential vampire-in the snow movie. You may say it’s not a masterpiece, but here at Dread Central we love this movie. The vampires are nasty, the premise is fascinating, and teenage-heartthrob-turned-hunky-man Josh Hartnett is our hero. Every year, the town of Barrow, Alaska experience a month of darkness. That’s what you get for living so far up north. An ancient group of vampires gets wind of Barrow and realizes that 30 days of darkness means 30 days of devouring human flesh. Shark-like teeth rip through flesh and stain the snow red. It’s a delightful nightmare highlighted by the horrific town massacre sequence that includes a birds-eye view of the mass destruction of human life. It’s iconic last 00s horror cinema.
The Black Water Vampire
I mentioned this on a recent list of winter-set found footage movies and I’ll recommend it again for the vampire lovers. This found footage horror follows a group of filmmakers investigating a series of murders where women’s bodies are found in the woods of Black Water drained of blood and bearing strange bite marks. A man is arrested for the crimes, but these filmmakers believe his innocent. So they trek in the frozen woods to find answers, even after hearing tell of supernatural creatures that stalk the area. While some of the story you can probably guess, there’s one little plot point that makes this film worth experiencing. It’s a neat found footage creature feature with one nasty vampire.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
OK so Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula doesn’t take place entirely in the winter. It actually takes place over the course of a year. But, the film’s ending occurs on the snowy slopes of the Carpathian mountains, accentuating the impending bitter end for the titular vampire. As Dracula (Gary Oldman) and Mina (Winoa Ryder) rip through the snow in their carriage, Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves), Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), and company gallop behind them wielding guns like vampire-hunting cowboys. As the humans face off with Dracula one last time, snow quietly falls around them, unperturbed by the violence at hand. It’s a darkly beautiful contrast to the bloody mayhem unraveling on the snow-covered grounds of Dracula’s castle.
Let The Right One In
Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 chilling vampire film Let The Right One In is another quintessential wintertime horror movie. Unlike 30 Days of Night, however, this film is much more tender and heartbreaking rather than an all-out gorefest. But don’t worry, there still is a lot of blood. The film follows Oskar, an outcast at school bullied for being “weird”. Then, he meets Eli, a young girl who walks through the snow barefoot. They strike up a strange friendship, one that takes place mostly at night on the playground. Then Oskar discovers Eli’s secret: she’s a vampire. But that won’t stop their friendship. Let The Right One In has plenty of vampire violence in a story about loneliness and found family.
Frostbite
This is a Swedish play on 30 Days of Night as a woman moves to Northern Sweden in midwinter where the sun doesn’t rise for 30 days. There, she’s meant to work with a world-renowned geneticist. What she doesn’t know is that she supposed to be helping work on a cure for vampirism, then a human-vampire hybrid. All hell breaks loose when a vampire infects a party full of people. Like in Barrow, this town is absolutely massacred. If you’re looking for a good wintertime double feature Frostbite and 30 Days of Night is the way to go.
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