Move over Saw, Jigsaw may have rocked your minds with his puzzling murders, but if you thought a movie couldn't get much higher on the gory scale, you couldn't be more wrong. Turns out that Norway's Tommy Workola pretty much tops the gore charts with his hair raising, gag inducing, lose-your-popcorn-on-your-lap thriller Dead Snow. The perpetrator of all of this gore? Oh, you guessed it, those elusive and pesky zombie Nazis. Virtually losing all plot twenty minutes in, this Nordic flop brings you back to or the glory days of those 80s slasher movies. Remember the classics such as Killer Klowns from Outer space or everyone's favorite-- Frankenhooker? (It's a stitch!)
..Yeah, me neither. Dead Snow is just about as forgettable.
With the same plot as practically every teen movie ever made, the director pretty much HAD to use something as outrageous as blood-drooling zombie Nazis. Dead Snow's character, Vergard, played by Lasse Valdal, even says it himself; "How many movies start out with a group of friends going to an isolated cabin!?" And that is exactly where this tale starts. Eight Norwegian medical students take a spring break (okay this is also the most overused plot sequence ) to an isolated cabin for some relaxation in the form of sex and massive amounts of alcohol consumption. The bulk of the plot (all four minutes of it,) comes when Vergard stumbles upon a chest (no, not even a chest. A better word is "rather small shoebox.") in the floor of the cabin while he is looking for some lost beer. The group somehow decides that it's theirs and they're going to be rich from the grand assortment of 10 coins that they found. This "treasure chest" looks more like it could possibly fund the group's next trip the liquor store, but the screenwriter has the balls to insert an Indiana Jones quote here-- "Fortune and glory kids fortune and glory." Yeah, right.
Next we hear a strange noise from outside the window, a strange old man enters, disses the hippie girl's organic coffee and chastises the group for not reading up on the local history of the area before coming on their grand vacation. Now I don't know about you, but if I'm headed on a spring break to a desolate mountain to drink and flirt with cute Norwegian boys, the last thing I'm interested n is the history of a 20-person shantytown. Plot fail.
This crazy old man goes on to tell a story about Germany's occupation of the area during WWII, stating that the Nazis treated the Norwegians poorly. Sick of the oppression, this small town of stoic mountain dwellers organizes a revolt, killing 300 of the Nazis. I'm a little curious about what kind of weaponry they scrounged up to overtake an entire trained army .But anyway, this whole "plot" consumes the first twenty minutes of the movie. From here on out, you lose all objectivity of any sort of direction this story is going.
So here is where every mistake ever made in a horror movie is somehow wrapped up all in one real thriller. Now is probably a good time to mention that one real sporty and adventurous girl decided to ski to this cabin, by herself, through this virtually unnavigable snowy mountain region of Norway. (Wonder who dies first!?!?) Cue the zombie Nazi infiltration of the movie through the cabin windows, where these merciless creatures pull girls into outhouse poop, rip off heads, pull intestines out and you, the lucky viewer, even get to see a brain fall on the floor of the cabin. Half way through this fiasco these ever so intelligent "medical students" (Why didn't they make them state school fraternity members?! They must not exist in Norway .) apparently forget that the zombies are attacking through the windows so they just chill by them again. And OH, you guessed it, another one bites the dust. You're just starting to scream at these imbecile characters when they break the number one cardinal rule of horror flicks—you NEVER split up, and God forbid, you NEVER split up boys and girls. But hey, the director must have figured he was already 10 feet out without a paddle so why not??
Now there's more zombies, more running, more limb-ripping terror. It starts to get real excessive when you realize that there's 5 minutes left and absolutely nothing has been resolved. I just about got up to leave when the ridiculous finale kept me wondering how this movie ever even made it to theaters. If it wasn't apparent in the rest of this review, I do not recommend this movie to even the biggest fan of gore movies. Please, save your five dollars on this one; you'll be better off taking a nap than wasting two hors of your life on this bloody awful flick—and no, I'm not British.
With the same plot as practically every teen movie ever made, the director pretty much HAD to use something as outrageous as blood-drooling zombie Nazis. Dead Snow's character, Vergard, played by Lasse Valdal, even says it himself; "How many movies start out with a group of friends going to an isolated cabin!?" And that is exactly where this tale starts. Eight Norwegian medical students take a spring break (okay this is also the most overused plot sequence ) to an isolated cabin for some relaxation in the form of sex and massive amounts of alcohol consumption. The bulk of the plot (all four minutes of it,) comes when Vergard stumbles upon a chest (no, not even a chest. A better word is "rather small shoebox.") in the floor of the cabin while he is looking for some lost beer. The group somehow decides that it's theirs and they're going to be rich from the grand assortment of 10 coins that they found. This "treasure chest" looks more like it could possibly fund the group's next trip the liquor store, but the screenwriter has the balls to insert an Indiana Jones quote here-- "Fortune and glory kids fortune and glory." Yeah, right.
Next we hear a strange noise from outside the window, a strange old man enters, disses the hippie girl's organic coffee and chastises the group for not reading up on the local history of the area before coming on their grand vacation. Now I don't know about you, but if I'm headed on a spring break to a desolate mountain to drink and flirt with cute Norwegian boys, the last thing I'm interested n is the history of a 20-person shantytown. Plot fail.
This crazy old man goes on to tell a story about Germany's occupation of the area during WWII, stating that the Nazis treated the Norwegians poorly. Sick of the oppression, this small town of stoic mountain dwellers organizes a revolt, killing 300 of the Nazis. I'm a little curious about what kind of weaponry they scrounged up to overtake an entire trained army .But anyway, this whole "plot" consumes the first twenty minutes of the movie. From here on out, you lose all objectivity of any sort of direction this story is going.
So here is where every mistake ever made in a horror movie is somehow wrapped up all in one real thriller. Now is probably a good time to mention that one real sporty and adventurous girl decided to ski to this cabin, by herself, through this virtually unnavigable snowy mountain region of Norway. (Wonder who dies first!?!?) Cue the zombie Nazi infiltration of the movie through the cabin windows, where these merciless creatures pull girls into outhouse poop, rip off heads, pull intestines out and you, the lucky viewer, even get to see a brain fall on the floor of the cabin. Half way through this fiasco these ever so intelligent "medical students" (Why didn't they make them state school fraternity members?! They must not exist in Norway .) apparently forget that the zombies are attacking through the windows so they just chill by them again. And OH, you guessed it, another one bites the dust. You're just starting to scream at these imbecile characters when they break the number one cardinal rule of horror flicks—you NEVER split up, and God forbid, you NEVER split up boys and girls. But hey, the director must have figured he was already 10 feet out without a paddle so why not??
Now there's more zombies, more running, more limb-ripping terror. It starts to get real excessive when you realize that there's 5 minutes left and absolutely nothing has been resolved. I just about got up to leave when the ridiculous finale kept me wondering how this movie ever even made it to theaters. If it wasn't apparent in the rest of this review, I do not recommend this movie to even the biggest fan of gore movies. Please, save your five dollars on this one; you'll be better off taking a nap than wasting two hors of your life on this bloody awful flick—and no, I'm not British.