The Missing Person wasn’t a film I heard a whole lot about going in. But it’s a film noir, and I’m a sucker for the genre, so there you go. The film stars Michael Shannon as typically sarcastic, gin slinging private investigator John Rosow and Amy Ryan as his wealthy client’s sexily buttoned-up assistant.

It’s a modern-day version of the standard noir fare, and the effect this has on the genre is what makes the film especially interesting. Director/writer Noah Buschel plays with his audience’s expectations of what film noir means. He includes the classic femme fatales and double crossers in his story but also adds elements only relevant to the modern world. Meanwhile, main character Rosow seems to have been transported from a previous, simpler time—he wears a dateless brown suit and has no idea how to operate a camera phone. 

The film isn’t the best looking of the bunch here at Sundance, but the story and performances make it worth the effort.

In contrast to The Missing Person is Dead Snow, a Norwegian horror film that had garnered quite a buzz at the festival. The set up is familiar: 8 students pack up their SUVs for an alcohol-filled spring vacation at a mountain cabin. Then a creepy traveler stops by for a late night visit, and voila—the shit begins to hit the fan. And this shit happens to be an army of greedy Nazi zombies.

While Dead Snow has its fun moments, the garden variety plot and reliance on American pop culture clichés make this film more unoriginal than self-aware. It certainly has an abundance of ridiculous gore (with special attention paid to the unlucky ones’ intestines), but the kills don’t make up for the overall lack of imagination here.

Look, I like Nazi zombies. But being foreign isn’t enough of a reason for a run-of-the-mill horror movie to have a slot at Sundance.

The Missing Person: B

Dead Snow: C minus

And to see some clips from Dead Snow, click here.