Review #249: Dead Snow (2009)

This review was originally written in October 2023.

Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #3 - Dead Snow (2009)

I'm pretty sure I know how the writing process for this film went: One of the writers put two words next to each other- "Nazi" and "Zombies"- and the script basically wrote itself after that. And what a script it was!

Dead Snow is a Norwegian horror film about a group of college students that go to a remote cabin in the snowy mountains, bing bang boom nazi zombies. (Like the script for the film, this review writes itself too!) The main thing that struck me about this movie is how clearly self-aware it is. We start off with the characters talking about how similar their situation is to so many popular horror films (name-dropping the likes of Evil Dead and Friday the 13th), and then barely fifteen minutes in their party is interrupted by a spooky traveler who exposits the horrific Nazi-filled backstory of the region, with his presence so on-the-nose as the harbinger of doom it feels like it was lifted straight from Cabin in the Woods. Then the group gets split up, the Nazi Zombies arrive, they get split up again, some of them die, the remainders get split up, and then the lone survivor has to figure out what's causing the Nazi Zombies to rise so he can do whatever needs to be done to stop this scourge. (The end. Or is it?)

It could be easy to look at this movie with its seemingly-low budget, its boilerplate dialogue, and its reliance on jump scares and gore, and say that this is just typical schlock. Although I spent most of the movie 95% sure this was a self-aware tribute to bigger, better horror films, the real stamp of approval came late in the film when a character gets bitten by a zombie on the arm, realizes that might mean he's going to turn into one, and grabs a nearby chainsaw to amputate his own arm (and cauterizing it with a quick application of gasoline and a lighter) in the hopes of stopping the infection before it can take him over. But then, as soon as he's breathed a breath of relief, another zombie pops up out of the ground and bites his dick. You just can't write this kind of stuff without realizing how stupid it all is, so at that point the needle was pushed to 110% sure that this was made by competent filmmakers trying to have some fun.

And it's clear the filmmakers, and the cast, had fun making it. The version I watched was dubbed into English, so some of this might be extra work on the part of the English voice cast, but it really sounded like everyone was having a blast delivering their lines, and the actors on-screen certainly looked like they were having fun. The first half of the film (right up until the crap really hits the fan) was chock-full of silly cabin vacation shenanigans, and the second half of the film has so many clever kills and some genuine scares and it was entertaining right up until the credits rolled. I very much enjoyed this film, and I'm excited to see how the second one matches up!

Overall Rating: 9/10 Snowmobile-Mounted Machine Guns

My Favorite Easter Egg: One of the characters wears a t-shirt prominently featuring the words "Brain Dead" on the chest, and he is eventually killed by having his eyes gouged and his skull split in half. Braindead was the original name of another famous horror film (its American title was Dead Alive), and the first kill in that film happens the same way!