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Day 6: May 6th, 2010

Dead Snow



The second half of this film is brilliant.

On a trip up to a cottage in the snowy mountain tops a group of friends encounter some mean nasty Nazi zombies. That's right Nazi zombies. Can they survive? Will we care? Why are we watching a film about Nazi zombies?

There was a lot of hype around this film, simply for those two words. Nazi Zombies. The only other film I remember having hype around it based on a few words was Snakes On A Plane. Dead Snow is a Norwegian horror film that plays up the comedic aspect of actually having Nazi zombies in the film. The entire first half of this film is rubbish, but I couldn't help but have a smile on my face once the sh*t hit the fan.

The film falters on many accounts. Let's see, the acting is atrocious, the characters are dumb and clichéd as hell, some aspects of the film scream low budget, the story is non- existent, some characters exists for expository dialogue, and don't even get me started on that outhouse scene. All of these things exist in campy, crappy horror films. This is a campy crappy horror film.

If there is one thing I hate about recent horror, it's when they reference older horror films, as if to say to the audience "Hey kids, we've seen these older films, so that means we know our stuff". It is so obvious and lame that I want to hurl. Evil Breed did it and Dead Snow does it. One character is a film buff and there are many obvious horror references, such as The Evil Dead and Friday the 13th. He wears Braindead t-shirts and tells the characters not to get bitten by zombies. Vomit.

All of the night attack scenes are boring and hard to actually see. Nothing new yet, it's not until it's actually daylight does the film begin to get where it needed to be 30 minutes ago. This is where the film is having fun and the audience can too. This isn't your typical zombie film, these guys run fast and they actually fight you. Like, throwing punches and dropping elbows.

The make-up work on the zombies is adequate as are the costumes. They really do look like Nazi Zombies. The story never tells us why they are zombies though, they either forgot or they want you to fill in that blank. There is a small bit about the soldiers stealing gold and jewelry while they were alive. It seems that if you take one they come after you, but this plot point is really inconsistent. There is a character who randomly shows up, tells us everything we need to know about the history of the Nazi zombies and then he leaves. Thank you very much for this riveting character.

The gore is great, even if a lot of the blood is obvious CGI. The moment I had the biggest smile on my face was when two characters arm themselves with a shed full of weapons. Yes, even the obligatory chainsaw. The comedy really hits its stride in the rising action of the film. Intestines flying everywhere, machine gun snow-mobiles, amputation, it goes on and on.

I can only recommend this film if you dig what it's selling. Nazi Zombies, if that sounds like fun, join in. If the thought of it makes you wonder why people bother with this trash, obviously skip it. It's not the best horror comedy, but it's something that will put a smile on your face.

Number of times the words Nazi Zombies is mentioned: 8.

The Film: