Dead Snow (aka Død Snø)

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
6.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
7.5/10


Nazi zombies. The Nazis were bad enough before they turned into zombies. I was actually surprised to find out that the Nazi zombie idea has been used several times before. Well, this is the first time I've seen it executed, and it is pretty hilarious.

The movie is a clear combination of gore and laughter. The massive squirting of fake blood and the loud Euro heavy-metal make everything funny, and then the amount of gore you can tolerate and still laugh aloud kind of makes yourself shudder. What a heartless bastard I've become.

The plot of this Norwegian gorefest is pretty stereotypical. A bunch of medical school students go up to a snowy mountain cabin to have a weekend of fun. Nazi zombies turn up and ruin everything. The plot may be a tad bit less ridiculous in the movie than I've described here. There's a whole backstory about how the Nazies were here during WWII and tortured the locals and were eventually driven deep into the mountains where they presumably froze to death.

The beauty of this film is that it's not afraid to poke fun at itself and its genre. Right in the beginning, one of the characters actually asks "isn't there some movie where a bunch of young people go on a trip where they can't get cell phone reception and then get slaughtered?"

Also, it breaks away from some American zombie horror standards. You know the kind of horror movies where you take one look at the ensemble of trapped individuals and know which ones will make it out alive and which ones are just dispensable comic relief? Well, this movie ain't one of them. People don't die in the order you think they will; there is no clear rule of death. This is an anything-goes world where Nazi zombies not only exist but can be bitten in return for biting you. Nerds can wield chain saws and hack zombies apart.

The type of zombies... is quite interesting. The typical American zombies are sluggish, dragging their feet while groaning "aaaaahhh". "28 Days Later" is quite revolutionary with its fast-acting zombies who have a rabies-like disease. The zombies in "Dead Snow" are kind of like wild beasts. They don't necessarily move really fast, but they move really heavily. They breathe really heavily. They have a language made of grunts. They punch through wooden boards. They have heavy Nazi uniforms and coats and helmets. They have enough coordination that you can have a melee fight with them.

The amount of intestines in the movie is ludicrous. At one point, one protagonist hangs over a cliff with a zombie's intestines that he has grabbed before being pushed over the edge. Another protagonist runs into a tree and keeps running, only to find out a few seconds later that his intestines were punctured and got caught on to the tree and dragged out of his abdomen.

And why exactly does the Nazi colonel on the cover (and in the movie) have a jolly roger on his hat? I'm pretty sure that is NOT one of the Nazi symbols.

There's way too much fun here to watch this movie by yourself. The best way is to gather a few horror fan friends and have a horror marathon that includes this movie. Everybody else's comments and derisive laughter will make this movie so much more fulfilling.