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Movie Review – Dead Snow

I like zombie movies.

Zombies as a concept can be seen as metaphors for a lot of things, from mindless consumerism to religious fanaticism to political zeal.

They're also versatile - they don't have the limitations of, say, werewolves or vampires, and they don't require much in the way of backstory to get the narrative going.¹

Perhaps most of all, they're kind of fun.²

So, I was quite intrigued when I learned of the 2009 Norwegian film, Død Snø (Dead Snow, in English - I'll refer to it by its English title from now on.)

Dead Snow features a Norwegian cast and crew.  I'm going to assume that neither of my readers is familiar enough with Norwegian film to be interested in who played what role, so I'll skip the part where I run through the actors and get straight to the story.  (I'll caveat this review with the admission that I watched the film several weeks ago, so bits may be slightly out-of-order, much like the fresh entrails of a victim of a zombie attack.  Consider it a feature of the article and not a flaw.)

We øpen øn a yøung wøman being chased thrøugh the snøwy wøøds øf Nørway at night.  Thrøugh the trees, we catch fleeting glimpses øf her pursuer.  She thinks she's løst him, and støps tø løøk arøund.  We can almøst feel her relief, when her attacker springs up øut of nøwhere like a brain-eating jack-in-the-bøx and ends the hunt.³

Cut to the rest of our characters:

The guys: Martin, Roy, Vegard and Erlend are heading to their rendezvous point with their ladyfriends for a weekend in a remote mountain cabin.

The girls: Hanna, Liv, and Chris, are in their car.  A fourth girl, Sara, is meeting the group at the cabin after having skied cross-country from wherever she started.

The group meets at the base of the mountain.  One of the guys, Vegard I think, heads up to the cabin on a snowmobile, and the others follow on foot.  We discover that Sara's family owns the cabin.

"Cabin", by the way, may be too generous of a term.  I've actually seen hamster cages that are more roomy than this "cabin", and the hamster cages at least have the luxurious perks of the little exercise wheel and a water bottle.  And sunflower seeds...

Our intrepid group appears to have packed for the weekend by bringing a CD boombox, some extra socks, and a case of beer.

After some snowcapades, it finally occurs to the group that Sara hasn't shown up yet, but nobody really seems concerned.  (Gripe:  if my girlfriend was skiing cross-country to meet me at a cabin, and wasn't there when she was supposed to be, I'd like to think I'd be quicker to start searching.  Our little bunch here appears to think it's perfectly reasonable to show up a day or two late...)

Cut to later in the evening, the group has returned to their spacious accommodations.  One of the ladies excuses herself to visit the outhouse.  Yes.  Outhouse.  In the frozen hill country of Norway.  Brrrrrrrrrr!

She catches fleeting glimpses of something moving around outside, and gets back in as fast as she can.  Soon there is a knock at the door.

Enter The Drifter.  I don't think he was given a name.  We'll call him Sven.  Sven looks like he's spent most of the last several years roaming around the woods waiting for someone to show up at the cabin so he can invite himself in for a cup of coffee and a smoke.

He sits down with the group, and tells them of the accursed history of the area.  Seems that back in World War II, a group of Nazi soldiers led by an officer named Herzog set up shop in the area.  When things went bad for the Nazis and it became clear they were going to lose, Herzog's group stole all the gold and valuables from the locals and fled into the hills, where they disappeared.  Neither the Nazis nor the plundered treasure was ever found.

Ever since, stories have been told about evil lurking in the hills, an evil which must not be disturbed!!!!!

Sorry.  Anyway, the group dismisses Sven as a nutcase, and he goes on his way into the night.

Our group of victims intrepid vacationers opens up a trap door in the floor to retrieve their beer, and we  catch a glimpse of a mysterious box with some sort of eerie yellowish fog wafting out of the keyhole.  The fog is there, I think, just to let us know that the box is important, since otherwise we might miss that important plot point.

From this point on, things get odder.  We revisit Sven, the drifter, making camp out in the snow in a small tent.  He hears a noise, and is promptly attacked, field dressed, and snacked upon by one of our evil Nazi zombies.  Maybe they got ticked at Sven for making them look bad in the story he told to the folks in the cabin, or maybe the zombie just got a craving for some entrails, I don't know.

The next morning, Vegard heads out on the snowmobile to hunt for Sara - a search that eventually leads him to Sven's gore-splattered campsite and what's left of Sven.⁴

Vegard presses on, and eventually falls through the snow into a cave and is knocked unconscious.

The others spend their day with more snowy frolicking, and once again return to the cabin for an evening of quality bonding time. They discover the mysterious box under the floor and open it to find the Nazi plunder. In a plot device apparently cribbed straight from inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, the zombies are attracted to the treasure.  In fact, when I saw the scene, my first thought was "Holy crap!  I bet that the treasure somehow drives the zombies, not unlike the way that the Aztec gold drove the crew of the Black Pearl to seek out every last coin!"

One of the guys (by this point I'd largely stopped trying to keep track of the names) heads to the outhouse, and is followed by Chris (the non-blond woman without the dreadlocks).  The two share a tender romantic interlude in the outhouse.⁵

Loverboy heads back into the cabin, while Chris stays behind to freshen up, whereupon she is beset by what we now know to be a Nazi zombie.

Chris fares poorly in this encounter.

The others soon realize that she hasn't returned, and begin a search, only to find themselves under siege by a group of zombies wielding Chris' now-detached head.  Amazing zombie action ensues, culminating with Loverboy literally going to pieces as the zombies pull him through a window.  (Zombies dragging someone through a window and pulling them apart is a must-have event in any self-respecting zombie film.)

He makes a torch and looks around, discovering various Nazi artifacts - flags, machine guns, potato-masher grenades, Sara's head, and such. He soon discovers the zombies.

Madcap zombie mayhem ensues, complete with a zombie-hanging-by-the-entrails bit that made me bust a gut laughing.⁶

Feeling all manly, Vegard attaches a machine gun to his snowmobile and heads back for the cabin.

Our other expendables have decided that their best shot at survival is for the women to go for help and the remaining guys to distract the zombies.

In alternating scenes, the women head towards what they believe to be civilization only to end up chased through the woods while the guys go all Spartan on the undead with a variety of hatches, axes , chainsaws, and maybe a board with a rusty nail in it.  Vegard shows up with his pimped out snowmobile and joins in the fun briefly before getting torn to bits, and the cabin burns to the ground.

The blond woman ends up getting taken down by the zombies, but before she can be completely devoured, she manages to arm a grenade on her consumer's belt, finishing them both off in a ball of fire.  The dreadlock girl manages to get away for the moment, after we learn that zombies can climb trees, and that sometimes the makeup effects folks cut corners.

The guys, meanwhile, aren't doing any better, largely because the pack of zombies seems to be nigh-endless.  Dreadlock girl finds her way back to the guys, where her guy mistakes her for a zombie and breaks up with her the hard way.

Herzog (the commander of the Nazis in the area, remember?) finally shows up.  He looks none too pleased that his minions haven't completely defeated the warm bodies yet...

...so he summons the rest (seriously, just how many Nazi zombies can there possibly be in one forest?)...

...who proceed to chase the last two survivors down the mountain, where we lose one to disembowelment via tree.  Herzog retrieves a piece of the treasure from the body, and our lone survivor finally makes the connection and heads back to the site of the cabin.  He sifts through the rubble and finds the box just as Herzog and his posse show up.

He returns the box to Herzog (who seems satisfied), and flees down the mountain.

As he digs out his keys to start the car, a single gold coin falls to the floor of the car.  He reaches down and picks it up, just in time to see Herzog's fist come through the window.

What a craptacular way to end a weekend getaway.

Let this be a lesson to anyone who ever finds a hidden box of treasure - make damn sure there aren't any zombies around before you open the box.

I'll give Dead Snow 3 half-eaten brains out of 5.

-Jay
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¹Of the classic zombie films made before roughly 2000, Romero's 1968 Night of The Living Dead remains, in my opinion, the definitive zombie film.  In the more recent batch, I have to give the nod to Shaun of the Dead (2004), although I also like Zombieland (2009), in particular Woody Harrelson's scene-chewing Tallahassee.

²I have a weird idea of fun...

³Honestly. I can deal with the jack-in-the-box bit if the monster is chasing the victim through, say, a cluttered building, or maybe a cornfield. At night. But the woods here aren't very dense, it's in bright moonlight, and the ground is covered in snow. Unless she's being chased by a vicious white rabbit, she should be able to spot whatever is following her. Do Norwegian zombies tunnel through the snow or something?

⁴Point of note: We often think of cinematic zombies as brainovores. However, close review of zombie films reveals that many, perhaps most, zombies are equally as fond of entrails. I propose the name cerebroentrailovore to address this particular dietary preference.

⁵If I never again have to watch a love scene set in an outhouse, I won't complain a bit...

⁶Yes. I made that joke. It's my blog, so I can do that.

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