I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE DOOMSDAY (2017)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed/Written by Mike Lombardo.
Check out the trailer here!!

Kelly (Hope Bikle) and her son Riley (Reeve Blazi) wait in an underground bunker for the return of their husband/father Simon (Damian Maffei) after some kind of apocalyptic event. As their food diminishes, Kelly ventures out to scavenge something for her and her son to celebrate the upcoming Christmas holiday.

I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE DOOMSDAY is a bleak, bleak, bleak little film. The stakes are as high as they can get and so is the melodrama, as Kelly desperately tries to find some way for her son to survive in this horrifying situation. This is not a feel-good movie as it spends an awful lot of time walling in the despair with the inevitable looming close overhead for these two doomed souls. Filmmaker Mike Lombardo does a great job of creating the dire mood with this terrible situation no one would ever want to be in. He also builds to a nice and of course, bleak climax as a gas masked Santa traverses the wasteland to deliver his bag full of goods.

And maybe that’s my main criticism of I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE DOOMSDAY. It might be a bit too bleak. Hope Bikle does a good job as the horrendously put-upon mother and spends most of the movie crying or attempting to hold back the tears for the sake of little Riley. But this melodrama is thick as a London fog and watching one disappointment after another occur becomes somewhat of an arduous chore as Kelly hits one hurdle after another. It felt like I’d run an emotional marathon by the time this one is over.

Clocking in at just around an hour and ten minutes, I think I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE DOOMSDAY might have been better had it been a short film. The melodramatic scenes are stretched out way too long and ultimately, I feel the same info could have been given and been more powerful had specific scenes been cut short or even cut out entirely. Personally, I seek out holiday horrors for twisted takes on holiday traditions. But if you’re in the mood to get nice and depressed, I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE DOOMSDAY will definitely ruin a good day.