At the End of the Reel

Dead Snow (2009)
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Starring: Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner
Language: Norwegian
Canadian Rating: 18A
1 star out of 4 (Bad)




By Albert Tam

Zombies attacking young adults in an abandoned cabin feels kind of like a recipe for a clichéd horror film. That is until Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola decided to do something unthinkable: Nazi zombies.

The film focuses on seven medical students on a ski trip in the deserted mountains of Norway. Their story is relatively unoriginal: the men are misogynistic and at times arrogant, the women are beautiful and filled with lust, and there are plenty of things going bumping in the night which forces these young students to band together to take on these evil undead Nazis.

If you’ve seen any of the trailers for this film, it seems to market itself as something a la Evil Dead, with its supposed blend of comedy and horror. The problem is that Dead Snow can’t decide what it wants to be – one minute it’s standard slasher, the next a slapstick blood-fest.

In fact, the Nazi aspect of this film feels kind of unrelated to the context of the picture. There is one joke by one of the Jewish students when he is bitten: “I’m half-Jewish. Do you think they’d want me on their side?” he says, but other than that one line, Dead Snow is an otherwise dull and overly simplistic zombie film that presents nothing new. No metaphor, limited humour, and gratuitous violence so over-the-top, it’s like it’s something out of Kill Bill. By the end, I felt Dead Snow wasn’t so much a zombie film, but a mere excuse for violence. A type of “Oh! Look what I can do!” movie by a filmmaker.

The performances by the all Norwegian cast are efficient and they scream, fight, and cry to the best of their abilities. Still, there’s nothing to admire here and I’ve got nothing left to say, just that this film is far too dull, that I’ll barely make 400 words by the end of this review, and that you’d be better off seeing any other zombie picture, like Evil Dead or Zombieland.

Dead Snow is trying to so very hard to be one of those two films and it has the potential to be that, but it’s too standard and leaves too many questions unanswered. Like, how did these Nazi zombies come to be? Do they actually eat human flesh or are they just intent to ripping out intestines for the sake of doing it? And if this film weren’t about Nazis and just about zombies, would it be any different?

I know the answer to that last question: doubtful.