Whiteout (2009)

I wonder why there arent more movies set in a truly cold environment? Antarctica and places like that are perfect for horror and thrillers, since the weather itself is as deadly as whatever beasties or psychos the movie serves up. I can accept the fact that it is somewhat harder to actually shoot a movie in such an environment, but can it really be that much harder than shooting in a jungle or the dull forests of Vancouver? Whiteout is a movie that uses just such an environment as a setting and while it may be flawed and full of cliches, it still gets its snowy landscapes just right and that is worth a lot.

Kate Beckinsale plays a Us Marshall posted at an outpost in Antarctica, due to some rather cliched personal reasons which are told with flashbacks throughout the movie. She is preparing to resign and go home, but just before she can do that someone finds a corpse in the snow. All this points towards a geological expedition which found something buried in the snow (a russian airplane. We see that very plane crash in the beginning of the movie) and now someone is going around killing people for the content of a crate in that plane, all while the great storm known as the Whiteout is approaching and everyone is evacuating. But who?! Well, you figure that out long before Kate does.

That is the major problem with the movie - the story. It has a story which is ok I suppose, but it isnt really that exciting. It's full of cliches and the "twists" arent especially hard to figure out. On the other hand, this means that you can put your brain in hibernation and just enjoy the rest of the movie which isnt all bad. The story may be a bit stale, but the movie looks incredibly good. The photography is truly awesome and the canadian locations are a feast for the ole eyes. The directors manages to wring out a fairly decent amount of suspense of the material he has, even though none of the actors really seem to give their best. A shitload full of cliches but at least they come in a shiny package. In the end, Whiteout is a fairly decent thriller and you can do a hell of a lot worse than this.