Okay, I know I should be up to volume 4 of Ghost Stories by now, but I really had to break in with one of the big new releases fresh and opening today.

Today we’re talking Whiteout--figured most everyone else would be handling Sorority Row today–and I’ve got good news!  It doesn’t completely suck!

Join us as we go on a tour of the wilds of Antarctica as Carrie Stetko, played more than ably by Kate Beckinsale, a U.S. Marshal with a painful past, finds herself neck-deep in a murder mystery that’ll go a lot deeper than she ever thought possible, in just about every sense.  Murder, conspiracy and betrayal are the order of the day on the underside of the world, but can Carrie stop a killer before she’s left stranded in Antarctica for the rest of the winter?

See, I liked this movie.  Apparently most of the critical community is breaking its back to decry it but I’m not seeing the problems they had.  Of course, I admit to a note of personal bias–I used to watch John Carpenter’s The Thing every Christmas Eve back when I was a kid, and movies about Antarctica are so few and so far between that I enjoy them whenever they show up, because they’re so rare.

If the originality factor didn’t do it for you, then maybe you’ll enjoy the surprises going on here, the twist ending, or the incredible stark beauty of the surroundings in which the movie was shot.  I don’t know how they got a fake Antarctica to look THAT COLD.

Okay, granted, this is no walk in the park.  It had some fairly dull stretches in which not very much was happening. I actually yawned and stretched a couple times–not exactly bellringers for success.   Some things were unnecessarily drawn out and even I got a little bored by the killer’s chase scenes taking place on tethered lines, but I tell you this much–it was almost eighty degrees outside when I caught this one, but by the time the first ten minutes kicked in, I was shivering.  Watching the wind whip across the snowpack, that takes me back to my childhood days in Michigan.  When they were explaining what exactly a “whiteout” is, I sat nodding.  I’ve seen those.  I’ve DRIVEN in those.  It’s really not as bad as they say, though–sure, visibility’s a joke but if you keep your speed down you can blow right through it.

In the end, though, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives Whiteout a respectable six out of ten for being a fairly engaging thriller with more than a few flaws and for being original and realistic enough to actually cool off a late summer Friday.