Review of Whiteout (2009) by Jack F — 02 Dec 2010

The harsh, wintry landscape of an Antarctic research station sounds like the ideal place for a horror/thriller movie. If you agree with this, then I've got a movie for you. It's tense, gruesome, and contains good special effects as well as an unsettling feeling of paranoia. And that movie is...John Carpenter's 1982 remake "The Thing." What, you thought I was going to say "Whiteout?" Seeing as, well, this is a review of "Whiteout," I guess that's reasonable, except that...well, "Whiteout" doesn't have any of the elements I described above. It's tedious, disorienting, and above all, dull. It's a thriller that doesn't thrill.

Kate Beckinsale plays Carrie Stetko, a U.S. Marshal assigned to a research station deep in the Antarctic tundra. Now why in God's name would anybody want to be assigned out here in this frozen wasteland? If you guessed it's because there's a traumatic experience in her past that she's trying to run away from, you're already smarter than the movie. And if you guessed that she's going to have to confront her past trauma throughout the course of the film, congratulations, you're even smarter than that.

Anyway, life in the station is relatively boring, until the day a body turns up on the ice. This is when we learn that, in addition to being a U.S. Marshal, Carrie is also apparently a member of the "CSI" team as she is able to immediately recreate the murder in explicit detail. This sets up the central murder mystery plot, which is boring and uninteresting, two things that a MURDER MYSTERY should not be. There are attacks by a mystery person wearing a parka and a ski mask. These attacks are not exciting, even though Carrie, for some odd reason, chooses not to use her firearm during them. It's as if she herself is trying to make the movie more interesting.

The climax involves an extended struggle between a few of the characters in the middle of a raging blizzard (hence the title, "Whiteout"). I imagine it's supposed to be tense and riveting, but it's really just confusing. Why? Well, because the characters are fighting in the MIDDLE OF A RAGING BLIZZARD. I understand the movie is called "Whiteout," but the problem with this scenario is that we the viewers can't see what the hell is going on. We can just barely make out that there are a few people fighting, but we can't see the details through all the swirling snow. While this may be what a real fight in a real whiteout would be like, it certainly doesn't do the movie (or the audience) any favors. It also didn't help that I couldn't tell which character was which. Someone would get punched, and I had no idea who it was, or who did it to him/her. It got to the point where I wished each of the characters was wearing a different colored neon coat, because I think that's the only way anybody would be able to distinguish who was who.

"Whiteout" deserves to be left out in the cold, folks. It's a boring, frustrating film.