REVIEW: Dead Snow

What can be worse than Nazis? Another Nazi uprising? How about if the Nazis from WWII find a way to time travel and prevent the bombing of Nagasaki? No… well how about Nazis that come back from the dead? This is where the film Dead Snow picks up. See, a group of goofy college students decide to camp up in an isolated part of a snowy mountain but they don’t realize that this was the final resting place of one of the most notorious Nazi armies. As time progresses, things begin to get spooky outside and soon the Nazis, under the command of the charismatic General Herzog, rise up from the ground to kill those who trespass on their resting spot. Dead Snow is probably one of the first modern films to show zombies in army formation. The production of the film was astonishing; it had gore, it had a lot of great horror movie tributes, there were zombies and the characters were surprisingly tolerable.

I want to first state the unlike most American films, the characters depicted in Dead Snow are a little different from the cardboard cutouts you’ll find in any given US film. In this movie they aren’t given too much depth but they are goofy and very fun to watch. They play games like Twister and share stories to one another. They are just a couple of kids that want to have a little fun during their break. However, there was one really disgusting moment. One of the girls makes out with one of the guys on the toilet while he is taking a crap… than proceeds to suck on his finger after he… you know… got done with his business. It was so disgustingly random that in some way it was refreshing.

The director of this film has to be a huge horror fan or at least appreciates horror enough to be inspired by it. Throughout the film there are several references (indirect and direct) to other horror films. In the beginning of the film they talk about Evil Dead and April Fools Day and how all horror movies start off with teens going into an isolated cabin. If you think about it… they are doing exactly what happened in Evil Dead. While on the topic of Evil Dead, the survivor guy is much like Ash in the sense that they are unlikely heroes that have lost everything they love. It even goes further when Martin (the Ash of Dead Snow) gets his infected after a zombie bites it. He than cuts it off and goes on a chainsaw massacre of Nazi zombies. It bares such a heavy resemblance to Evil Dead that it’s almost a reinterpretation of the film. It also seems as though Dead Snow sort of plays on the isolation aspects of Night of the Living Dead. Consider the hoards of uniformed zombies surrounding a group of survivors that have locked themselves up in a cabin.

Now lets talk about the zombies. They aren’t your typical lumbering, white-eyed, slow moving drones. Hell, they aren’t really your typical fast-running zombies. In this movie they know how to coordinate battle formations, they know how to scout out people and they are quite intelligent despite their lack of voice. However, the most conspicuous difference these zombies have is that they don’t have an infection that turns others into zombies and therefore they don’t eat brains. If they bite you, you’ll probably just bleed to death. If they attack you, they’ll just kill you and leave you body alone. They don’t want to spread their infection, they don’t want your brains, they just want to kill and destroy the world. It’s such a creative chance to the zombie mythology.

If you love zombies movies than I can’t urge you enough to check this movie out. You would think that with a concept like Nazi zombies it would be stupid but it’s not. It’s a very well made, somewhat scary, but entertaining zombie flick. It goes to show you that there are still some original ideas out there that can be brought to the big screen. If I were you, I would probably only watch it for the zombies. I think that the zombie culture has a new contender for greatest zombie villain… General Herzog. Is he ranked up there with Bub, Big Daddy or the Tar Man? You decide!

Available on Amazon on DVD and Blu-Ray.