October movie Marathon Part 3: Dead Snow (2009)

Nazi Germany was one of the most brutal and terrifying regimes of the 20th century. The Nazis have made for menacing foes in plenty of movies over the years, from Indiana Jones to Schindler’s List. So how do you make Nazis an even more dangerous threat? You make them into Zombies! The Norwegian horror film Dead Snow does just that.

The film is set in the mountains of Norway as a bunch of medical students head out to an isolated cabin for a fun weekend full of drinking and snowmobiling. However, once in the cabin, they encounter a mysterious hiker who recounts a tale of German soldiers who occupied the area during the war, and subjected to the local population to unspeakable atrocities. Apparently, as the war ended these soldiers were murdered by the local population who rebelled, when the soldiers attempted to steal their precious gold. The man claims an unspeakable evil lurks in the mountains, and pretty soon the students face a horde of undead zombies who are out to reclaim their lost gold.

Dead Snow plays almost like a remake of Evil Dead set in Norway, and the movie pays direct homage to other classic horror films like Dead-Alive. You can expect the same kind of horror action that straddles the line between goofy and gross that was found in those movies. I felt like the movie was maybe a little too aware of this by going to the lengths of including a nerdy film buff character who constantly references movies. At a point in the movie I started to feel “Yeah we get it, you like old horror movies.”

However, Dead Snow does have some great gore and action scenes toward the end of the movie as the characters engage in all out battle with the Nazi Zombies. There are plenty of decapitations, disembowelment, and characters being ripped limb from limb in this film, and a lot of this happens in broad daylight, so don’t expect too much suspense or scares in this movie. The characters decide not to run from the zombies, but face them head on. This leads to the movies best scenes, including a character mounting a German MG-42 machine gun to his snowmobile and mowing down dozens of Nazis. The movie tries to give the characters Bruce Campbell style one liners thought the film, but most of these fall kind of flat, partly because of the subtitles and partly because they are just plain bad.

Perhaps, the most surprising problem with Dead Snow, is just the lack of creativity. I never really felt that the movie took complete advantage of the excellent premise of having Nazi zombies. There is plenty of rich lore and stories about the Nazis associations with the occult and black magic, or their experiments with eugenics and fringe science. Either of these could have been exploited, and made for a rich and compelling plot. Instead the explanation for the zombies is vague and generic. The film seems too comfortable walking the same well trodden ground of other horror films, and I would have liked for it to try to be its on thing.

Dead Snow isn’t the best zombie film ever, and probably isn’t even the best Nazi zombie film ever. Check it out if you like the Evil Dead films, but keep in mind you won’t be seeing much new here.

5/10