First I would like to thank Mikael Stridsson for sending me a screener of the swedish independent horror film Svart Död (which in english means Black Death), I got hold of one of the coveted first copies that is part of a limited prerelease, my copy is numbered 35 of 100.
An evil mining company is hiding chemical waste in an old disused mine, but a accident occurs and the five miners entrusted with the storage of this waste is trapped and the barrels break ... 30 years later, a group of geology studentsfind the mine by mistake and go into it. Meanwhile, some environmentalists have decided to blow up the entrance to the mine. The students become trapped, and soon blood begins to splatter the walls ...
Svart Död is written and directed by Daniel Lehmussaari. He and Cruzial Film & Media have made four feature films, short films, music videos and documentaries, both long and short.
The pacing is pretty good, the film never gets boring with it´s mix of horror and comedy. The camera work is good, especially the scenes in the mine is good and some of the scenes are really well done as they mix studio footage and filming in a real mine. The acting is uneven, but this is micro budget and the cast are mostly amateurs so I didn´t have any real expectations, I did like Evelina Nilsson as Therese who is a naive Paris Hilton wanna be, she provided a lot of humour and comic relief.
The special fx is uneven, it is a mix of practical and digital fx. There is a fair amount of gore on display and some of the attacks of the zombies are bloody, there is a fair amount of biting at peoples throats and necks almost to the degree that I was starting to wonder if I was watching a vampire flick..
As far as I know Cruzial Film is now looking for a distributor to give Svart Död a wider release.
Rating: 3½ out of 7. Svart Död is more entertaining than I expected it to be, the humour is mostly intentional and the film doesn´t take itself to seriously.
/JL
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