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© 2009 IFC
DEAD SNOW
Movies:
Movie Review: 'DEAD SNOW'
Now we know what might have happened if THE EVIL DEAD films had been made in Scandinavia
Grade: BStars: Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kasseth Rosten, Jeppe Beck Laursen, Jenny Skavlan
Writer(s): Stig Frode Henriksen & Tommy Wirkola
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Release Date: June 26th, 2009
Rating: Not Rated
Distributor: IFC Films
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN,
Published 7/4/2009
Okay, here’s something you don’t see every day: a Norwegian-made, Norwegian language (with English subtitles) horror/black comedy film about a cabin full of college students tangling with Nazi zombies. The DEAD SNOW press notes quote director/co-writer Tommy Wirkola as saying he wanted to make a “feel good” horror movie in the vein of Peter Jackson’s BRAINDEAD or Sam Raimi’s EVIL DEAD ventures (the latter are tagged in the dialogue here). Wirkola doesn’t often hit the completely manic quality of these earlier goalposts, but he and co-writer Stig Frode Henriksen have both a healthy sense of the absurd and an obvious respect for the genre.
A prologue, with “The Hall of the Mountain King,” no less, on the soundtrack, shows a lone skier trying unsuccessfully to avoid monstrous pursuers in a moonlit mountain forest. The next day, we meet her friends (and their friends): four young men and three young women who are spending their Easter vacation from medical school at a remote mountain cabin where there’s no cell phone reception. They’re not entirely oblivious to cinematic precedent, what with Erlend (Jeppe Beck Laursen) challenging the others to name various horror movies that start out just this way. They’re not alarmed by the absence of Sara (Ane Dahl Torp), the young woman who’s killed at the beginning, as they figure she’s just taking her time to get to the cabin. Then a stranger (Bjorn Sundquist) arrives at the door, for a cup of coffee, a beer, some rude behavior and a warning about the area’s WWII-era history, when some fed-up locals chased the Nazi occupiers up into the mountains, where they were never seen again – at least, not as regular human beings.
Soon enough, there are guns, hammers, chainsaws, snowmobiles and anything else you can imagine mustered in a fight against the living dead. Wirkola comes up with a lot of smart set pieces, jumps and laughs, though “feel good” may be pushing it. The gore quotient is up there with the best of them. Wirkola and cowriter Henriksen (who also costars as one of the beleaguered students) have some conceptually effective jokes, like people trying to board up a cabin that seems to be half-made of windows and there are some interesting choices about which characters bow out early and which stick around. The director also includes some glorious scenery, utilizing snow as backdrop, prop and a fine device for continually startling us.
The cast is good and all on the same wavelength, with especially notable work from Lasse Valdal as Vegard, the most overtly heroic member of the group, and Charlotte Frogner as the determined Hanna.
The tone of DEAD SNOW tends to wobble sometimes, becoming a bit episodic as we track multiple characters breaking off from the group, and there are a few stretches where the film switches from high gear to low. Some things just go unexplained, like why the exceedingly rude traveler played by Sundquist is camping out here at all, as he knows the region’s dangers. Overall, though, anyone who enjoys the EVIL DEAD spirit should have fun playing with this SNOW.
DEAD SNOW is playing in limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles and is available on Video on Demand.
Reader Comments
Otkon from Columbus, OH sez....
SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. SPOILERS. Did you entirely miss the fact that the Nazi Zombies triumph, get to keep their blood treasure that they were only trying to defend, and literally castrate the one remotely Jewish character in the entire film? I call the intent of the filmmakers into question here. The at-odds horror-humor aspect and the disturbing moral arc really leave one wondering.
7/9/2009 12:15:50 PM
