Dead Snow Review [2]

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 06.25.2009

Two words: Nazi Zombies

Written and Directed by Tommy Wirkola
Co-Written by Stig Frode Henriksen

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



I believe there are four things that make a monster movie work. The first is originality, the second is the gore effect, the third is interesting characters and the fourth is a quality storyline. If any of these four items are in place, you have the chance for a watchable horror flick. If you have two or more of these ingredients, you can have a decent horror movie. I can count on one hand the amount of times all four are involved in any specific film and those films are the genre’s masterpieces.

From the outside looking in, Dead Snow has the first ingredient solidly in place. Nazi zombies. Let’s see all the movies offering up Nazi zombies raise their hands. Shock Waves? Yep, knew about that one, but its twenty years later so it’s time for a ... Wait, what? Houses of War? Outpost? Ok, fine, but it’s still original to me!

At least I thought it was going to be original. As a huge fan of zombie movies, I am quite disappointed by a number of things about these specific Nazi zombies. The first problem I have is they are only Nazis to give the filmmakers some kind of background as to why they exist. I should back up and give you a little insight into the plot of the movie.

A group of guys meets a group of girls in the snowy Norwegian mountains for a vacation. They meet a crotchety old man who warns them about the legend of a group of Nazi soldiers who used to loot the local village until the town folk turned on them, chasing them into the mountains to die. Those Nazi soldiers are now the undead and start killing the kids.

That’s the movie.

Let’s get back to my disappointment with the Nazi zombies.

They run. That is not so much a problem these days because I don’t mind quick moving zombies in the wake of the very good 28 Days Later movies. I know those weren’t zombies, but give me some latitude here because these filmmakers took more latitude than I could ever take reviewing their movie. The zombies are smart. One of them uses binoculars. Then they are stupid. One of them pulls a pin on a grenade and blows himself up. They are good fighters, one of them straddling one of the kids, punching him with his fist. One of them climbs a tree. These are zombies, but at the same time they are something completely different.

That could be viewed as original. I don’t know. It annoyed me on more occasions then it captivated me.

Speaking of stupid, let’s look at the kids. They are arrogant and ignorant, despite being medical students. There is not one redeemable character among the group. There is the fat guy. There is the geek who spouts movie knowledge for no reason except to name drop Evil Dead I and II. There is the mouthy jerk. There is a low rent Paul Walker wannabe who separates from the group early when he sets off to find his girlfriend, who we already know from the opening scene is dead. Then there are three girls, one seems to be our “survival girl” (she isn’t) and the other two are interchangeable.

I know you’re dying to know how we get to know them. After they make the car trip to the mountains and reach the cabin they play games including Twister. For some strange reason that is never explained, the movie geek has a game he wants to play with one of the girls where he places a pillow over her face and begins to smother her while sitting on her. I honestly have no idea what the hell that scene was all about and the next time we see them together, they are happy again. These scenes account for the first thirty minutes of the movie.

Oh yeah, one of the girls has sex with the fat guy while he is sitting in the outhouse taking a dump.

I do not want to meet the director of this movie. He scares me for all the wrong reasons.

You might have heard of Tommy Wirkola’s last movie, Kill Buljo: The Movie. Guess what it rips off? I’m sorry. Guess what it is a parody of? Well, Dead Snow is a straight horror movie and, while it does not play the parody card, borrows a little too much from other movies, specifically Evil Dead and Shaun of the Dead. There are even shots almost exactly the same as ones found in both those films. Remember the car ride to the cabin in Evil Dead? Check. Remember the opening the door of the hole in the floor and finding something you shouldn’t have found? Check. Remember the scene in Shaun of the Dead where David is dragged through the window and torn to shreds while one of his friends stands with a shotgun in hand? Check. Remember the scene where the girl had sex with a guy who was taking a dump? Oh wait, that’s one of Wirkola’s original ideas.

There is even a chainsaw for one of the kids to grab. Guess what he ends up doing with it?

Check.

Tommy Wirkola could have a decent career if he wanted to spend his time paying homage, parodying, or just plain ripping off other people’s movies. He’s got it down to an art. There are small moments that I was impressed. When one of the kids gets knocked off a cliff, he grabs the first thing he can find to save himself - the intestines of one of the zombies. That was cool. There is also a cool moment where we get a first person point of view as the zombies eat a girl’s intestines. That was kind of cool too.

What about the gore, you ask? The big ass fight between the Nazi zombies and the survivors was a big, gory, messy, disgusting treat with entrails flowing and blood and guts splattering everywhere. So, what do we have here? A zombie movie with some very different zombies whose goals, it turns out, are very un-zombie like. It is a movie filled with just about every cliché in the book, including some stolen directly from other movies. The characters suck horribly and all deserve to be killed. There are cool moments, some of which I described above, but those are offset with some ridiculous moments (the outhouse sex, the suffocation game???).

The 411: Dead Snow is humorous at some points and ridiculous at others. The zombies are barely zombies and could be better described as pissed off dead Nazis. The characters are almost indistinguishable and none are worth the thirty minutes of setup we were forced to spend getting to know them before the Nazis began attacking. The gore is spectacular and so very over-the-top cool, all done with practical special effects, making it even better. If you eliminate the first thirty or forty minutes of the movie and skip straight to the balls out fight with the Nazis, you are in for a treat. If you watch the entire movie, you will be sorely disappointed.

Final Score:  5.0   [ Not So Good ]