Dead Snow

Review By: Tom Herrmann
TomHerrmann@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: A-

There are two words you need hear before any others in regards to this movie -- “Nazi Zombies.” The living dead might be scary, but when the living dead have extremely right winged political views and over nationalistic ideals, then they are really scary. At first glance the whole Nazi thing might come as a turn off to most viewers, but the film is surprisingly well executed as a dark comedy-horror. Being that this very specific genre is a rarity, it’s great to have this be my second review of a dark comedy-horror in the past month.

We start off in a very Friday the 13th fashion with the twenty-something characters heading into the isolated wilderness for a vacation filled with sex, drugs and imminent demise. This classic slasher feeling carries through the rest of the film and is accompanied by an essence of Evil Dead with our main characters trapped in a cabin with a bit of a zombie infestation; Nazi-zombies that is. There is a back-story as to why there are Nazis in the Norwegian mountains, but very few people are watching this movie for those kinds of miniscule details.

These aren’t the only two franchises that seem to have influenced this movie, even Leprechaun seems to have made its way in there with them, “I want me gold!” motivation of the Nazi zombies. Even with all of the inspirations being somewhat stale, Dead Snow manages to remain very fresh. As opposed to ripping off these other films, it is in a sense paying homage to them while creating something somewhat new at the same time. We even get an obvious confession in the very beginning when Erland (Jeppe Laursen) brings up how typical the excursion to the cabin is for a horror film.

One thing that was very unconventional was the portrayal of the zombies. At this point everyone should have accepted the fact that zombies are allowed to be fast so I won’t touch the “running zombie” issue but what I do have a huge issue with is the communication and obedience of the zombies. The whole point of a zombie is that their brains are inactive with the exception of their most primal functions and only have the desire to feed. Here we see zombies calling to one another and obeying their commanding officer. It is almost like they aren’t zombies at all and just a more monstrous version of the Nazis.

With that said, there is a nice little bit of symbolism in this that accomplishes the hard task of being noticeable and not taking away from the comedy too much. Towards the end there is a great moment where one of the characters injures another in the midst of all the hack-slash. This and a few other moments show that going out and killing, even Nazis, will ultimately result in you losing something you care about. Maybe saying a little something about war? Just something to ...