"Well. Been busy."
Summary:
A group of Norwegian medical students are spending their vacations together at a remote cabin in the mountains. But their revelry is cut short once members of their group start getting cut down. After an initial period of uncertainty, the students learn the nature of their peril: an army of undead Nazis guards the mountains and the pillaged war spoils still hidden there, and the group has unwittingly disturbed that army...
Starring:
Vegar Hoel as Martin, Hanna's boyfriend, who is frequently mocked by his fellow medical students for his professionally inconvenient fear of blood.
Stig Frode Henriksen as Roy, "the horniest guy north of the Arctic Circle." Roy previously served in the (presumably Norwegian) military, though I certainly hope he was never trusted to throw a grenade.
Charlotte Frogner as Hanna, Martin's girlfriend. Although Hanna seems like a bit of a pushover at first, she turns out to have a knack for survival, even when avalanches and the undead are involved.
Lasse Valdal as Vegard, Sara's boyfriend, an outdoorsman who spends much of the movie snowmobiling to a backdrop of Norwegian metal. Like Roy, Vegard served in the military. Unlike Roy, Vegard apparently used his time in the military to become an absolute bad ass.
Evy Kasseth Røsten as Liv, that panicky girl from that slasher flick you saw once. No, it doesn't matter which girl or movie you're thinking about right now.
Jeppe Laursen as Erlend, "the world's biggest movie nerd."
Jenny Skavlan as Chris, Hanna's "very single" cousin.
Jenny Skavlan as Chris, Hanna's "very single" cousin.
Review:
If Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson somehow had a Norwegian love child, and that child grew up and made a zombie movie, that movie would probably look an awful lot like Tommy Wirkola's Dead Snow. Part zombie movie, part slasher, and part parody, Dead Snow has more blood, guts, meta commentary/comedy, and Evil Dead references than you can shake a severed limb at.
The movie opens in typical slasher fashion: 1.) group of two-dimensional young characters travel together to a remote location, 2.) group of two-dimensional young characters are warned of mysterious curse/creature/killer by mysterious stranger, 3.) somebody has sex, 4.) group of two-dimensional young characters starts dying one by one. Sure, Wirkola is quick to remind his audience that he's aware of all these tropes, particularly through Erlend's near constant analysis of movies (and of the group's actions as though they were in a movie, which of course they are). And despite the fact that the first half of the film is pretty well-worn territory, there's a lot to be said for knowing your genre as well as Wirkola clearly does.
In fact, Dead Snow was considerably better than I expected from a writing and production standpoint. When I hear "[whatever] zombies," I'm not expecting a triumph of modern cinema. I'm not expecting airtight plotlines and well-rounded characters. I'm expecting clown zombies, or pet zombies, or whatever else a few folks with a camera and some fake blood decided to zombify this month.
So how did the Nazi zombies do?
Quite well, actually. Sure, the film is slap-sticky (with an emphasis on "sticky," as this is one of the bloodier/gutsier films you'll ever see). Sure, it's referential and self-referential to the point where sometimes it seems like one long inside joke. And no, the fact that the zombies were Nazis didn't add much to the film. But if you're a fan of the genres Dead Snow sends up, you'll likely enjoy the film. Wirkola turns a lot of conventions on their heads even while he follows others to the letter, the actors all turn in excellent performances even while playing characters who are essentially the product of some sort of horror-movie Madlibs, and the movie is so deadpan that it's sometimes tough to tell whether we should be laughing with it, at it, or both.
What impressed me most, though, is how well Dead Snow was shot. Premises like "Nazi zombies" absolutely scream "B-movie," but Dead Snow is anything but. This film has some fantastic camera work in it, from a dark, disorienting, and rotating avalanche aftermath to a blurry, muffled, first-person disemboweling. The makeup and special effects work is also superb, with effects ranging from the strikingly realistic to the downright absurd (I'm 99% certain that the tensile strength of human intestines is significantly lower than Dead Snow would have us believe).
All in all, Dead Snow is a very good movie. It doesn't blaze any new trails (though I've rarely heard zombies actually roar), and if you know your horror movies you can predict most of the movie inside the first ten minutes, but the narrative is solid (and, for the most part, satisfyingly predictable), the acting is excellent, and the overall production is extremely impressive. English-speaking audiences will have to read subtitles, and the gore quotient means this film is not for the queasy, but if any of that puts you off, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog in the first place. I look forward to adding this film to my collection in the near future.
The movie opens in typical slasher fashion: 1.) group of two-dimensional young characters travel together to a remote location, 2.) group of two-dimensional young characters are warned of mysterious curse/creature/killer by mysterious stranger, 3.) somebody has sex, 4.) group of two-dimensional young characters starts dying one by one. Sure, Wirkola is quick to remind his audience that he's aware of all these tropes, particularly through Erlend's near constant analysis of movies (and of the group's actions as though they were in a movie, which of course they are). And despite the fact that the first half of the film is pretty well-worn territory, there's a lot to be said for knowing your genre as well as Wirkola clearly does.
In fact, Dead Snow was considerably better than I expected from a writing and production standpoint. When I hear "[whatever] zombies," I'm not expecting a triumph of modern cinema. I'm not expecting airtight plotlines and well-rounded characters. I'm expecting clown zombies, or pet zombies, or whatever else a few folks with a camera and some fake blood decided to zombify this month.
So how did the Nazi zombies do?
Quite well, actually. Sure, the film is slap-sticky (with an emphasis on "sticky," as this is one of the bloodier/gutsier films you'll ever see). Sure, it's referential and self-referential to the point where sometimes it seems like one long inside joke. And no, the fact that the zombies were Nazis didn't add much to the film. But if you're a fan of the genres Dead Snow sends up, you'll likely enjoy the film. Wirkola turns a lot of conventions on their heads even while he follows others to the letter, the actors all turn in excellent performances even while playing characters who are essentially the product of some sort of horror-movie Madlibs, and the movie is so deadpan that it's sometimes tough to tell whether we should be laughing with it, at it, or both.
What impressed me most, though, is how well Dead Snow was shot. Premises like "Nazi zombies" absolutely scream "B-movie," but Dead Snow is anything but. This film has some fantastic camera work in it, from a dark, disorienting, and rotating avalanche aftermath to a blurry, muffled, first-person disemboweling. The makeup and special effects work is also superb, with effects ranging from the strikingly realistic to the downright absurd (I'm 99% certain that the tensile strength of human intestines is significantly lower than Dead Snow would have us believe).
All in all, Dead Snow is a very good movie. It doesn't blaze any new trails (though I've rarely heard zombies actually roar), and if you know your horror movies you can predict most of the movie inside the first ten minutes, but the narrative is solid (and, for the most part, satisfyingly predictable), the acting is excellent, and the overall production is extremely impressive. English-speaking audiences will have to read subtitles, and the gore quotient means this film is not for the queasy, but if any of that puts you off, you probably shouldn't be reading this blog in the first place. I look forward to adding this film to my collection in the near future.
3.0/5.0
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