Dead Snow Review

Dead Snow is extremely silly, violent and totally plotless. It was awesome! A great movie to watch when you want to reboot the ol’ noodle!

My rating

How many types of horror film monsters can you name? Here’s a few off the top of my head, there are: zombies, the living dead, the undead, demons, slashers, mutants… frozen Nazi zombies? WTF? What will they think of next? Horror films can be fun if done right, but I’m always skeptical.  It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s that there aren’t many that I think are good. When I watch a horror movie, I would love to be scared by it…fat chance! Since that is not going to happen then at least I would like to see some serious carnage, and lots of blood, and lots of flesh being torn to bits. Now, that is my idea of a good time! Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen too often in movies because the American film industry thinks that the American film viewer won’t be able to handle it. Maybe they’re right, what do I know? What I do know is that we don’t get to see the carnage too often and on the off chance that we do see it, it’s not very creative or realistic. BORING!

When I put Dead Snow on my list, my first impression was that I have never seen a Scandinavian film before, let alone a Scandinavian horror film. I wondered if I would like it, I wondered if it would be any good. The film was made by Norwegian filmmakers up in the mountains of Norway. I don’t know anything about the Norwegian film industry, but after seeing Dead Snow I think that these people are sick and I love it. This probably explains the Norwegian curling team pants during the 2010 Olympics. I’m starting to like these people! Plus they have a really cool coast line, have you seen this? It must’ve been a nightmare to map out before they had satellite imagery. How did they do that?

Dead Snow started with a group of pre-med students who were taking their Easter vacation break up in the mountains of Norway. One of the students, Vegard, had a girlfriend who owned a cabin up in the mountain where a host of different winter activities awaited them, sports like: skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, hacking up Nazi zombies—wait that wasn’t part of the plan. But it does end up as THE one activity that they do the most.

The plan was that they were going to spend the night there while they waited for Vegard’s girlfriend to show up. In the morning she would take them on a tour of the mountain and have a good time. Little did they know that that first night at the cabin would be their last night alive! As they sat around enjoying each other’s company while drinking and having fun, there was a knock at the door. It was some random man on his way back to his tent. He just wanted to get warm for a few minutes. The kids let him in, gave him hot coffee and listened to him as he warned them about an evil in the mountains. Of course the kids just thought that the old man was crazy or was just trying to scare them, but they humored him anyway and then sent him on his way.

The next day, Vegard was beginning to worry that his girlfriend was still a no show. Since there was no cell reception up in the mountains he couldn’t call her to make sure everything was okay.  He decided to leave everyone at the cabin while he took the snowmobile up in the mountains to look for her. On his way to find his girlfriend, Vegard came across a tent. Thinking that it might’ve been his girlfriend he peaked inside only to find the strange man from the night before had been eaten alive.

From that point on the Nazi zombies began to pop out of just about everywhere and they were relentless. They were also very creative killers. They took one kid’s head and split it open like a coconut and his brains fell out on to the floor like two big Jell-O molds. Another kid was taken and split in half. If you listened carefully, you can almost hear the Nazi zombies making a wish! (They didn’t translate it, but I’m quite sure that’s what “Arggg RŘŖRЯrřrgg” means. Did you know that in Zombie there are more than 50 unique ‘R’ sounds?) Eyeballs were popped and squeezed out, heads were severed, bodies were mangled, snowmobiles were used in ways they weren’t intended for, people screamed, people ran and fell, and yet more Nazi zombies emerged from the snow. The battle was on, but it was a losing one for the poor pre-med kids who were totally out matched and outnumbered and one of them had an aversion to blood. Not a desired trait when fighting off a mob of Nazi zombies.

The Nazi zombies kicked-ass! I’ve never seen anything like it; it was almost epic. I’m so glad that I saw it. The movie was very fun to watch. It was also funny and featured surprisingly good acting too. They managed to take something normally cheesy and make it fun again. If you’re a fan of good graphic carnage and don’t mind reading a few subtitles, Dead Snow is a must see. Actually, don’t worry about the subtitles so much. There really wasn’t a lot of dialog in the movie, after all most of the spoken lines were just screams of despair and of fright, you don’t need to translate that. Besides, this was Norwegian we’re talking about which is surprisingly similar to English, after all they are related. I even thought it was interesting that they pronounced the ‘K’ in “knife”. I wonder if at some point English did too, but because we’re so damn lazy we stopped pronouncing it. I say let’s stop the shenanigans and drop that stupid ‘K’ entirely…but I stray!