DEAD SNOW (2009 - Norwegian)

Studio:       IFC Films
Director:    Tommy Wirkola
Writer:       Tommy Wirkola, Stig Frode Henriksen
Producer:  Terje Stroemstad, Tomas Evjen
Stars:     Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kasseth Rosten, Jeppe Beck Laursen, Jenny Skavlan, Ane Dahl Torp, Bjorn Sundquist, Orjan Gamst

Review Score: 

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Summary:

On a snowbound winter holiday, eight friends unleash a curse that has them fighting for their lives against undead Nazi soldiers. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A woman named Sara is chased through snow covered woods before being eaten by zombies.

Seven medical school friends are en route to a cabin for a holiday. The four men are Martin, Roy, Vegard, and Erlend. The three women are Hanna, Liv, and Chris. Vegard’s girlfriend Sara, who was killed in the opening scene, owns the cabin. Vegard uses a snowmobile to reach the cabin and wait for Sara while the others hike there through the snow. At the cabin, the friends drink, play Twister, sled, and begin relaxing.

During the night, a strange hiker visits their cabin. He recounts the history of the region. During WWII, Oksfjord was a station for the German forces. Led by Standartenfuhrer Herzog, the Germans tortured and beat the local civilians. Facing defeat by the Russians, the Germans stole all of the valuables they could find from the citizens. The 3,000 citizens banded together with axes, knives, shovels, and scythes and attacked the Germans. Several soldiers died while Herzog and the rest of his unit retreated into the mountains with the stolen goods. They presumably froze to death, but the town has always stepped lightly in that area of the mountains. After providing a disdainful warning, the hiker leaves.

Vegard later dreams of Sara spitting up blood. Outside in the snow, the hiker is attacked by zombies and killed at his campsite.

In the morning, Vegard sets off on the snowmobile to search for Sara. He eventually finds the murdered hiker and follows the bloody tracks in the snow. He later falls into a cave and is knocked unconscious.

The others continue enjoying themselves at the cabin. Underneath a floorboard where the beer is being stored, Erlend finds an old wooden curio box with the stolen valuables from the hiker’s story. They agree to wait for Vegard and Sara to return before doing anything with the valuables, but Hanna slips one of the coins into Martin’s pocket.

On his way to the outhouse, Erlend drops a coin in the snow. Chris follows him into the outhouse and they have sex. A zombie picks up the dropped coin. Erlend leaves Chris in the outhouse and returns to the cabin. Chris is attacked and killed but her screams cannot be heard over the loud music inside.

Believing that the hiker may have returned and done something to Chris, Martin takes a shotgun from above the door and searches the perimeter with Erlend and Roy. They find Sara’s backpack in the snow. When the group is back inside the cabin, zombies attack through the windows. Erlend’s head is torn apart.

The next day, Vegard recovers and explores the cave. He finds guns, helmets, and a Nazi flag, as well as Sara’s severed head. He then fights off a zombie attack. More zombies attack and one tackles him over a cliff edge, but Vegard is saved when he is tangled in the dangling intestines of another zombie. He later stitches his wounds and mounts a machine gun onto the snowmobile.

Martin and Roy run into the woods to act as bait while Liv and Hanna try making their way back to the cars. Liv is knocked out and wakes to find zombies eating her insides. She uses a grenade to blow herself up along with the zombies. Hanna causes a cliff edge to collapse so that she and a pursuing zombie tumble to the snow bank below, but she later recovers.

Herzog and his group attack the cabin where Martin and Roy have returned to hole up. Roy misses the window with a Molotov cocktail and sets the cabin on fire. The two men retreat to a shed and arm themselves with a chainsaw and a sledgehammer. Roy and Martin then destroy a number of the attacking zombies before Vegard arrives to assist with his snowmobile gun. During a lull, the three men regroup until Vegard is attacked by surprise and pulled into pieces. Hanna comes upon Martin in the ensuing zombie battle and he accidentally kills her with an axe to the neck. Herzog’s zombies launch another attack and Martin shoots most of them down but is bitten on his arm. He decides to amputate, although Roy protests that it is unlikely he will turn into a Nazi zombie since Martin’s grandfather is half Jewish. Martin amputates and cauterizes his arm anyway, but then a zombie lurches up from the snow and bites his crotch. That he decides not to amputate.

Herzog emits a load roar that summons dozens of other zombies from the ground. Roy is killed when his intestines are caught on a tree while running and Herzog recovers a gold watch from Roy’s pocket. Martin makes it back to the rubble of the burned down cabin. He takes the box of valuables and gives it to Herzog. The zombies seem pacified. Martin makes it back to a car but then finds the gold coin that Hanna put in his pocket earlier. A zombie attacks him through the car window.

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Review:

Nazi zombies.  Any words more than those two would be overkill on the description.  Should lingering questions about the nature of the movie remain, one look at the DVD box cover should satisfy all curiosity.  The image of a bloody chainsaw dripping above the decapitated head of a zombified Nazi soldier is a firm clue about the tone of the film.  And I am reasonably certain that skull on the colonel’s cap was not standard German issue during WWII.

Combining history’s most notorious monsters with contemporary genre fiction’s most infamous creatures seems like such an obvious template that it is a wonder it took until 2009 for someone to make it a popular film.  “Dead Snow” is director Tommy Wirkola’s love letter to the earlier films of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.  Some might even accuse him of outright theft.  Be it homage or rip-off, Wirkola is plainly upfront about his intentions.  Between the character wearing the “Braindead” t-shirt and the characters discussing “Evil Dead,” the formula here is anything but secret.  Drop the splatter of Peter Jackson’s “Braindead” (a.k.a. “Dead Alive”) into the setup of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” and you pretty much have the plot of “Dead Snow.”  Once again, any more description than that would be unnecessary.  But here it is anyway:

Seven friends’ holiday in the snow covered mountains of Norway turns into a nightmarish fight for survival when they unwittingly unleash a curse.  After stumbling upon an heirloom box of ill-gained valuables, the Nazi soldiers who originally stole the shiny trinkets return from the dead to reclaim the treasure.

Or something like that.  The movie is deliberately vague about more than a few things, including why/how these soldiers became zombies in the first place.  Those details are unimportant in the grand scheme of what “Dead Snow” means to accomplish, though.  The story only makes as much sense as is necessary to kick the action into gear.

Comedy is a sub-genre of horror that is often difficult to do right.  The common mistake many horror-comedies make is to set the action in a world so cartoony that an appearance by Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse would not come as a surprise.  Could “Scary Movie 5” conceivably take place in any reality we know?  No.  Could “Dead Snow?”  Well, probably not.  But it has a subtlety to its comedic touches that almost makes the absurdity that much more plausible.

“Dead Snow” offers the right sized side dish of comedy with its main course of horror.  The moments played for laughs always land squarely in the middle of some awful occurrence or zombie attack.  This makes them good for a quick chuckle until the action immediately ratchets itself back up again.  What to do about amputating appendages bitten by the undead is one zombie trope used slyly for a memorable laugh.  A Molotov cocktail mishap provides another big smile.  It is only enough to serve as a reminder that the movie is never meant to walk a completely straight line.  Although that does not mean that all seriousness is to be dismissed.

Even though the individual scenes of gore are intentionally over-the-top, they too fit just right into the overall tableau.  There is a pacing to the shots of spilled innards and torn off limbs that makes the timing have impact without feeling excessive.  The undertone of comedy is most welcome in those blood soaked moments when one needs to remember that such an extreme manner of death would be physically impossible, even if the gruesomeness initially tells the brain otherwise.

Wirkola could not have dreamed of a better setting for his Jackson Pollock-esque splatterfest than the crisp, white, mountain show.  As if any more attention needed to be drawn to the gore, snow offers the perfect backdrop for showcasing the generous amounts of blood and carnage in all their gratuitous glory.  Between the innumerable severed limbs and no less than three different ropes of intestines on display, there are more than enough effective makeup tricks on hand to appreciate.  Combine the excellent costuming of the undead soldiers with convincing effects of collapsing cliff sides and the result is a visually impressive presentation.

“Dead Snow” is unlikely to be confused for a film that advances the zombie genre in any meaningful way.  Characters have traits with little bearing on any of the events that take place.  They are merely pieces of meat to be fed upon, but Wirkola seems okay with that.  The emphasis is clearly on the visual presentation just mentioned, and that is perfectly okay.  The film is clear about its purpose and deftly walks the line between comedy and horror, serious and pastiche.  It can be appreciated for what it is, which is entertainment, rather than criticized for what it is not, which is… well, anything more ambitious than that.

“Dead Snow” is not unlike the box of stolen gold at the center of the plot.  It draws coveted attention for no reason other than because it is shiny and enjoyable.  That does not mean that the audience is comparable to a cadre of ravenous Nazi zombies.  It simply means that looking for any deeper motivation behind the film would really be missing the point.

NOTE: The Norwegian title is "Død Snø."

Review Score:  65

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