I think, after the last couple of films reviewed nearly scared me into total insomnia, that we need to look at some lighter horror fare. So, of course, my mind goes straight to zombies - and Nazi zombies at that. Today we're taking a look at Norwegian Nazi zombie horror-comedy Dead Snow (or Død snø in the original Norwegian).
A group of medical students head into the snowy mountains of Norway to spend their Easter break in a cabin owned by one of the group. The group includes Hanna and her boyfriend Martin, who is haemophobic; Erlend, who is a horror movie geek; and Vegard and Sara, the latter of whom owns the cabin they are staying at and who was supposed to be meeting them there. Unfortunately, Sara has already been killed by a group of Nazi zombies who roam the area according to a passing stranger the group briefly meet. During World War 2 the Nazis, led by "Colonel" Herzog, occupied the area and tortured and killed the locals for three years before looting their valuables near the end of the war, but they were attacked by the townspeople and either killed or froze to death in the mountains. Unfortunately for everyone, the Nazis aren't quite dead enough, and when the group find an old box filled with gold underneath the cabin the undead Herzog and his men return to reclaim their cursed loot, and they're more than willing to tear the group apart to get to it...
If you're bitten by a Nazi zombie, do you become a "regular" zombie or a Nazi zombie? One day a movie might appear that tackles that philosophical question that also compares extremist political ideology with a communicable rabid disease, but Dead Snow is not that movie. Which is a bit of a shame, as there could be some comedy in that and Dead Snow is a horror-comedy. It's also another one of those movies that's a love letter to various horror movies that have come before it, not the least of which include Friday the 13th, Night of the Living Dead, Braindead and the Evil Dead (but again, minus any tree rape). There's a Crazy Ralph-type character, for example, whose sole purpose is to be creepy, provide exposition, and then die - he doesn't quite say that the place has a death curse, but he comes close. It's also an unashamed splatter movie, with chainsaws, axes, sledgehammers and even a snowmobile employed to turn the Nazi zombies into so much mulch, and it's all a lot of fun to watch - and of course since it's Nazi zombies on the receiving end, there are no worries that the audience will have any conflicting sympathies for them.
Very technically, the Nazi zombies are more draugr than the traditional modern zombie - Scandinavian undead who guard their often-stolen treasure and punish those who trespass on their burial sites - although the movie never makes this distinction and it matters little for the plot of the film anyway. This little bit of Norse folklore in interesting to note, though, because one of director Tommy Wirkola's other works is Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (remember Chekov's Convenient Diabetic Coma?), and so it's pretty clear that he has an interest in these old stories.
There's a couple of flaws in Dead Snow, although neither of them are really immersion-breaking. Vegard is just a little too competent a survivor and badass Nazi zombie fighter to survive in a movie like this; he's good-looking, sporty, resourceful and takes on several Nazi zombies by himself, but it's when he sews up his own neck wound with some handy fishing line I realised he was probably not going to make it to the end of the film (sorry). Horror comedies like this need more slapstick and pratfalls than Big Damn Heroes, and we have them in spades with Martin and Roy, who moments after Vegard finishes his self-surgery, are seen setting the cabin they're in on fire because they can't throw a Molotov properly, but I just didn't find them as engaging as Vegard. They were no Bruce Campbell, that's for sure.
The other problem I have with Dead Snow... Well, there's a scene in the movie where one character goes to the outhouse to do his business, and one of the women follows him and they have impromptu sex right there in the outhouse. The guy then goes back inside while the woman uses the toilet, whereupon the Nazi zombies drag her through the toilet and kill her. And I can't help but think that's rather meanspirited and unpleasant, and somewhat at odds with the more lighthearted tone of the rest of the film (as lighthearted as Nazi zombies can get, at any rate). I don't think it's actually misogynist, or at least not deliberately so, but covering a woman in poop and then killing her, straight after she's had sex, just strikes me as a little darker than the rest of Dead Snow wanted to be and so sticks out for the wrong reasons.
But these aren't major issues by any means. Dead Snow was clearly made by someone who loves all those splattery movies from the 1980s and beyond, and that love shines through in the film. It's an entertaining, funny, splattery romp through bloodstained snow, and while it's not an intellectual powerhouse of a film or one that's going to make you check behind your doors or keep the lights on all night to ward off creepy clowns or ghosts, it's still a lot of fun to watch.
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