‘Dead Snow’: Nazi zombies in Norway
What can we learn from “Dead Snow”?
That the winter light in Norway is a consistent deep blue. And that, unlike normal zombies, Nazi zombies can run.
Who knew that Norway had such a thriving strain of modern horror films? Last year’s “Let the Right One In” was a darkly comic coming-of-age story of a friendless preteen who falls in love with a vampire girl his age.
And now “Dead Snow” arrives, bearing tales of Nazi zombies roaming ski country in Norway.
Director Tommy Wirkola’s film is gruesomely funny in a Sam Raimi/George Romero vein: over the top, Grand Guignol violence, including one guy actually being torn limb from limb.
It’s the simplest kind of story, so simple the young medical students escaping for a weekend of debauchery at a mountain cabin comment upon it: “How many movies have you seen where a group of people go into the woods and die?” one character asks.
Once they’re isolated, they learn a little lore: Nazi soldiers terrorized the area until the end of World War II, when the locals rose up and killed as many as they could, chasing the rest into the mountains to die. And strange things have been happening in those mountains ever since.
There you have it: the film’s prima facie case that the Nazis all died but live on as flesh-eating zombies. Cue the zombies.
The rest of the film focuses on the med students’ battle to stay alive, as more and more Nazis storm troopers – including a colonel to lead them – pop up out of the snow. One by one, the zombies pick off the med students. Their signature moves: throat-slitting and a neat little maneuver where the victim watches his large intestine stretched out in front of him like a bungee cord.
Why am I writing about this film? Well, really, when was the last time you saw a movie about Nazi zombies? Credit where credit is due.
