Dead in 3 Days (2006)

aka: In 3 Tagen bist du tot
Dir: Andreas Prochaska

An Austrian slasher? I was curious as well. But you can skip this tired, rehash of far more interesting slashers.

A tight knit group of teens living in Ebensce Austria has just graduated from high school. Martin (Laurence Rupp) likes poetry and dates Nina (Sabrina Reiter ONE WAY TRIP). Fish monger Clemens (Michael Steinocher) is sweet on Alex (Nadja Vogel). Mona (Julia Rosa Stöckl) is all on her own. Each of them receives an anonymous text message stating that they will die in three days. They don't think much of the message, at first dismissing it as a prank, until their numbers start dwindling.

Spoilers!

They all have a secret! As children, while playing ice hockey they fled the scene when one of their friends broke through the ice and drowned. The boy's distraught father hanged himself. The mother has other ideas. She's out for revenge. Does the idea of a serial killer mother who lost her only child to drowning due to the neglect of others sound familiar to anyone?

The haggard plot doesn't have the inspired gory kills that made many of the American slashers fun to watch to prop itself up and the oft dimwitted characters don't help (let's leave our police protected home and go see if the killer is living in an abandoned house!). Skip this one and instead see the same year's COLD PREY for how a revamp of the slasher should be done.

A sequel was released in 2008.

*1/2 out of ****