Dead Snow

I’d like to say upfront that I am burned out on zombie movies, so factor that into the following review, as it may be too harsh.

There was a fair amount of positive buzz around Dead Snow (Død Snø in Norwegian, which for some reason I think looks cool), the Norwegian Nazi-zombies-in-the-snow horror comedy. It got good write-ups in both Rue Morgue and Fangoria, so I was fairly eager to check it out.

A group of Norwegian medical students, all fairly stupid, go on a vacation together at a remote mountain cabin. They have some fun childlike antics, and then a mysterious stranger appears. He is Exposition Guy, whose mission is to fill in the background story for the film. He tells how the local area was occupied by the Nazis in World War Two*, and the locals rose up and killed the Nazis after the Germans stole their gold and jewelry. Since then, the undead Nazis protect their hidden loot. After Exposition Guy leaves and is eaten, the med students discover, you guessed it, the swag. Nazi zombies appear and start to kill and devour them, while the hapless students try stupidly to escape.

I dunno. The movie is supposed to be funny, but it seemed tired and clichéd to me. Maybe it was the subtitles. I know enough Spanish French and Russian to sort of follow along with the movie, and subtitles don’t matter for a lot of Asian films since the dialogue often has sweet FA to do with the plot, but I found it harder to catch the nuance of the acting with the subtitles here.

The visual look, decaying zombies clad in pristine Nazi uniforms against a snowy white backdrop, is very nice.

If you are a diehard zombie fan, you will probably want to give Dead Snow a try for yourself. If, like me, you feel like you’ve overdosed on zombie films, you may want to give this a pass.






* The oddest comment was along the lines of “The other places occupied by the Nazis in Norway, they got along well with the locals, but not here.” Is this a confession?
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