I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

"In 3 Tagen bist du tot" is an Austrian horror film from 10 years ago and actually one of the most known movie from this genre from German-language territory. This does not make it a good film though. The writer and director is Andreas Prochaska and his movie here runs for slightly over 90 minutes, or slightly under if you don't count the credit sequence. You could certainly call it the Middle European take on "I Know What You Did Last Summer", but I think it is inferior. It is about a young woman and her friends who had a terrible accident in the past involving an innocent child and now, in the present, this accident comes back to haunt them, not in a supernatural form though. It is all about revenge.Usually, about these films, they can work well in 2 different ways. The first would be that you actually care about the characters and hope they live because they are good people and likable. The second would be that they are so stupid and arrogant that you actually feel for the killer, which could be the case here because of the tragic background story. But neither of the two applied for me and this is why I did not enjoy the movie particularly. There were a couple moments that were decent, but there were also moments that were really bad and in which the characters acted in a truly idiotic manner. One of several examples would be when the boy points the gun at the killer at the end but stands there until he gets stabbed instead of firing one bullet after the other. I would love to say his sympathy made his reaction appropriate, but it just doesn't make any sense to me.Apparently, audiences and Prochaska thought differently about this film and felt it deserved a sequel. I couldn't agree less. At least, the filmmaker managed to step up his craft recently with the pretty gritty revenge western "Das finstere Tal". In my opinion you should watch that one and not this film here. I do not recommend "Dead in 3 Days". Thumbs down.

I liked this film, but it had so much potential to be an important film in Austrian horror-film history. As a thriller, it had every element that makes a European-style thriller breathtakingly beautiful, but as a slasher, this visual beauty took away the terror and fun that is usually associated with the genre. The film is slow and only has fun teen-slasher music at the very beginning and very end. If re-edited with a new soundtrack, faster cuts, and shortened to around the 80minute mark, I believe this could be the film it's solid script hoped it would be.I look forward to watching the sequel as I have read good things about it.

A man hangs himself. Five youths, just graduated from school, hit a deer while celebrating in exhilarated spirits, while driving down the road in their SUV. A tragic incident involving a kid who drowned after falling through a fragile sheet of ice due to the attempt at securing a puck while playing ice-hockey with five other children. A warning to the five high-schoolers who put the deer out of it's misery that they will die in exactly three days. All these plot elements converge by the film's end, establishing the motive for why a mysterious predator is targeting the young adults just fresh out of high school, exasperated at surviving and optimistic about the future.The film's setting(..a city surrounded by giant, snowy mountains and water)is beautiful, the camera-work striking, and the acting good. But, the film treads familiar waters and the story-line isn't even remotely original. The killer wears a black slicker and leather gloves, there's a brief amount of nudity, and a bit of graphic violence(..one murder sequence, featuring a victim's head immersed in a fish take, her throat tearing into the sharp edges of the aquarium, is particularly grisly)which might please slasher fans, because Dead in 3 Days features the familiar aspects all too common in the genre. The conclusion has annoyingly stupid behavior by the three remaining principles(..not excluding a really dumb decision of a younger sister to one of the group who follows after them)who up and decide to return to the lake house where the first victim was found tied to a rock used to hold him underwater. This lake house is of major importance to the plot for it pertains to the dead kid whose father was so grief-stricken he decided to take his own life. A blatantly obvious red herring is provided, but I have a feeling his dismissal from the plot won't surprise anyone. How the three remaining survivors aren't able to defend themselves against the killer who stands idle in this cold-blank trance-like state is really rather contrived. Obvious influences include One Missed Call(..the foreboding text message to those targeted)and I Know What You Did Last Summer(..youths involved in the accidental murder of an innocent).

"In 3 Tagen bist du tot" was a very successful film in Austria. There are some negative, as well as some positive things about it. It is definitely positive that it even was made. For everyone who knows Austrian cinema this has to be a surprise because genre-horror is practically non-existent in Austria. Another thing on the plus side is that the characters are worked out very well for this kind of movie. But as happy as I am that a film like this can also be made in Austria with dialect speaking actors, there still is one big problem: the story. Of course it's hard to be original in this genre where almost everything has been done at least twice, but that's no excuse for a story that's so hackneyed, that it almost made me a bit angry. And I also think they were a bit too cautious in the gory scenes. But I hope that the success of this film will make it easier also for other Austrian talents to get their project financed.