Review of Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead

Don't even believe for one second that "Dead Snow 2" is better than the original! Whoever claims that probably also thinks that all horror remakes are superior to their originals and that they should make another fifteen sequels to the "Saw" franchise. Fact of the matter remains that the Norwegian "Dead Snow" from 2009 was an entertaining and refreshing zombie-hit, and the entire world noticed so as well. Writer/director Tommy Wirkola promptly got offered a ticket to Hollywood and the change to direct a modern version of a classic Grimm fairy-tale. I haven't seen "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters" – and I don't immediately intend to – but considering the success it had, I'm honestly surprised that our director still returned to his fatherland to make a sequel to his international breakthrough hit. After having seen part 2, I'm actually a lot less surprised, as Wirkola completely "Hollywoodized" his success formula and turned "Dead Snow 2" into a lame and derivative splatter comedy. All of a sudden half of the cast is American, the body count increases tremendously and all the snow has melted. Martin, the sole survivor of the snow mountain massacre discovers that Commander Herzog and his squad of Nazi zombies weren't interested in recovering the lost golden coins after all, but they stood up from their graves because they have a mission to complete! A mission that they received from Hitler himself, that ordered to kill and entire village. Martin, wanted for the mass-murder of his friends and accidentally wearing the Nazi Commander's right arm, has to stop them and gets help from American zombie geeks, a gay museum curator and a platoon of Russian zombie warriors. "Dead Snow 2" shouldn't even be called like this, since the largest part of the film – everything after the intro, in fact – takes place in a green and summery environment! Without its snowy and tangible ice-cold filming locations, the formula immediately loses half of its charm and powerful impact. And Tommy Wirkola's creativity appears to be melting just as fast as the snow… All the characters turned into awful stereotypes (zombie geeks quoting "Star Wars"? Oh, come on…), the gore & bloodshed is now dull and uninspired (intestines-pulling is only ingenious the first couple of times) and the humor became overly crude and tasteless. Call me a sourpuss if you must, but I simply don't think that blasting away young mothers and their newborn babies with a rocket launcher is funny. Luckily there are still a handful of imaginative ideas and twists, like for example the endlessly resurrecting sidekick zombie and the deliberately cheesy soundtrack (including Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart"), but overall this was the biggest disappointment of the year. The 2009 original remains the only great Nazi-zombie flick ever made, along with the awesome 1977 "Shock Waves".