I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday Review (2017)

★★★ out of ★★★★★
Directed by Mike Lombardo.

The holidays are just around the corner! Well, technically the holidays are ALWAYS just around the corner. The only thing more bleak than the constant crush of forced holiday frivolity? I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday.

If you’re looking for a nice reprieve from holiday merriment than you may have to look elsewhere. I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday is a toxic cocktail of It’s a Wonderful Life, a dash of Silent Night Deadly Night, and a tablespoon of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a grisly, but fascinating little piece of cinema to gander. 

All the more incredible? This film was basically made for no money. Well probably a couple bucks, but not that many bucks. 

Directed by independent filmmaker Mike Lombardo (Reel Splatter Productions), I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday is largely a one-act play set in a single location. Featuring an amazing performance from Kelly Enck (Hope Bikle) as a mother stuffed into a dusty and rusty bunker following a nuclear(?) holocaust. Hope is forced to simultaneously contend with the fact that her husband may never be returning to the bunker, and creating a cheery holiday for her young son Riley (Reeve Blazi) — who also turns out a pretty amazing performance. 

As the holidays approach Hope must find food, decorate the bunker, and figure out whether life in a post-nuclear war is actually worth living. She puts on a good face, but all the while it’s clear that Hope is broken and tortured by the horrible possibility that this may be the last Christmas ever. 

ATMOSfx! Woo!
This is not beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Doom definitely comes…and it comes in bleak and unrelenting waves. The brilliance of I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday is the fact that it stays in its lane and puts forth an earnest realism. Again, with no budget. A true nuclear holocaust would unlikely be filled with Walking Dead-esque moral quandaries and battlefield melees, but more likely curling up in a ball, rationing spam, and hoping to god it’s all a dream. 

I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday is certainly a shoe-string production — with a capital S — but it’s also a pretty great concept that juxtaposes the evil and destruction of a holocaust with the warm and sublime reverence found for the holidays. This is story that could easily be retold, but it’s entirely unclear if a $10 or 20 million dollar budget would get you anything more. Our bet? A crappy Hollywood production. 

I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday is TV-14 and you should go buy a copy from Reel Splatter and support independent horror! We did!

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