Dead Snow Review

Posted by Joseph Lee on 06.24.2009

It's a movie about Nazi zombies. What more do you need to know?



Starring:

*Charlotte Frogner as Hanna
*Ørjan Gamst as Herzog
*Stig Frode Henriksen as Roy
*Vegar Hoel as Martin
*Jeppe Laursen as Erlend
*Evy Kasseth Røsten as Liv
*Jenny Skavlan as Chris
*Bjørn Sundquist as The Wanderer
*Ane Dahl Torp as Sara
*Lasse Valdal as Vegard

Story: A ski vacation turns horrific for a group of medical students, as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace: Nazi zombies.

Trivia: This film premiered at Sundance in January, and IFC Films picked up the rights to distribute.

It's really amazing that the zombie film has managed to stick around as long as it has. Especially in modern times, zombies, as a genre have just over-saturated horror films to the point that if you're not spoofing them, you're going to find it hard to create a zombie movie that can still do something new. Some people are perfectly okay with that, and are content to make the same old stuff. Some people, like Tommy Wirkola, strive for something more.

I'm not going to say Død Snø (or Dead Snow over here) is unique, as both "zombiesploitation" and "nazisploitation" were both popular types of films in horror back when the grindhouse cinema was in it's heyday. But it's been a while since I've seen one, and this film still manages to push the bar and bring something new to the table. It's sad to see that some of the best zombie movies of the past five years have come from overseas or were made independently, but that's the state we are in. This film just happens to come from Norway.

Let's get the negatives out of the way, as I have a lot to praise this film for. First of all, yes, the plot is silly. But I'd argue that no casual horror fan is going to want to watch this anyway. You have to be in a pretty specific crowd to see an outline that includes Nazi zombies and think to yourself, "that's awesome". If you are in that crowd, congratulations! This is your movie. Another fault with the film is that it takes a while to get going. Character development has it's place, but I'd argue in a film such as this you don't need it. This film is set up to be a gory and fun ride, and holding off on that for a group of friends to play Twister feels like filler and it's just boring.

But outside of those negatives, this film has so much going for it. As a horror fan, a movie automatically gets my respect when it has nerds who love horror reference those movies (as well as others). The character of Erlend is just that kind of guy. He wears Braindead shirts, shouts "Yippee-Kay-Yay Motherf*cker" during snow ball fights and knows immediately what the zombie problem is. Erlend is the core audience for this film. As such, he became my favorite character. This movie doesn't just stop with zombie movies, but is sure to mention slashers and the typical convention of friends going on a trip without communications.

Another thing I liked was this films innovation. It does this two-fold: the zombies and the gore. The zombies take the "runner zombie" from recent films one step further. These zombies are very unique. They can run, jump, climb trees, get into fist fights (yes, this happens!), and have motivations other than eating flesh. They are intelligent zombies, there are a lot of them, and they're very angry. Watching the zombies do something more than shamble and eat people made this a much better than average film for me. As far as the gore is concerned...well it takes a lot to shock me, and this movie managed to do so. I can't possibly give any of them away, but let's just say that you can do a lot with someone's intestines.

At the end of the day, I was pleasantly surprised by this film, and it was probably one of the better genre efforts of the year. It's silly, yes, and there's not much in the way of plot, but that doesn't matter. It's a Norwegian film about Nazi zombies, and it is very awesome.

The 411: As mentioned previously, you should know right away if you want to see a film like Død Snø or not. But if you do want to see a film like this, then I highly recommend this one. It's funny, it's gory, it has lots of innovation that I didn't think was possible in this day and age. I could be bold and say that this will be held in as high regard as films like Braindead or Evil Dead 2 in the future, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

Final Score:  8.5   [ Very Good ]