A group of medical students are spending the week at a secluded cabin in the mountains to relax and escape the stress of school. Unfortunately for them, their cabin sits atop the site where a large battalion of Nazis froze to death during WWII. Oh, by the way, the Nazis are now zombies. How? Why? That’s not important. What is important is that these college kids are now in a fight for their lives against a troop of flesh eating National Socialists.
Dead Snow is a movie made by horror fans for horror fans and director Tommy Wirkola makes this very clear from the get-go. Wirkola’s Norwegian Nazi-zombie flick can be seen as his homage to classic horror comedies of the 80’s and early 90’s. Fans of the early works of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson will be instantly sold. The self-aware nature of Dead Snow is what allows it to succeed. While the premise of a group of kids visiting a secluded cabin has been done to death, it becomes justified when the characters reference the Evil Dead and Friday the 13th in the opening scenes of the movie. From that point on, any self-respecting horror fan viewing this film is forced to abandon any “they don’t make them like they used to” attitudes toward contemporary horror and simply enjoy the ride.
The first half of the movie is pretty slow-paced, almost to a fault considering the familiar nature of its narrative structure. Once the students are settled in the cabin, they are visited by a mysterious drifter who claims there is a curse on the mountains and they would be well advised to leave as soon as possible and never come back. The kids ignore the warnings and the drifter continues to inexplicably wander aimlessly through the same mountains he claims are too dangerous for any human to inhabit. Even though a good forty-five minutes are spent setting the stage in Dead Snow, the characters are still relatively one-dimensional, with the only real attempt at depth being that one of the medical students is, ironically, afraid of blood.
However, the uneventful first half of Dead Snow is completely redeemed once zombies start to rise from the snow. As soon as the living-dead Nazis begin to attack the cabin, any notion that Wirkola would not be able to live up to the standard of classic horror he references at the beginning of the film is instantly abandoned. Dead Snow features the cutting edge in gore-related technology and showcases a brutal struggle for survival as the characters face off against the undead Third Reich. Each blood-soaked attack leave will you thinking, “There is no way they can top that” and yet, somehow, Wirkola manages to continue to outdo himself in every scene until the credits roll.
Horror connoisseurs are sure to appreciate Dead Snow, a film that is truly aware and respectful of its roots. If the notion of an unoriginal plot or one-dimensional characters concerns you, then you’re missing the point. Dead Snow delivers tense and shocking moments as well as thrills, laughs, and plenty of buckets of blood. This movie pulls no punches and is exactly what you want from a film about undead Nazis. It’s time to update your Netflix queues, horror fans. Dead Snow will not disappoint.
lawlz
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