When I first caught wind of DEAD SNOW, I was browsing though Yahoo Movies and saw some great production stills. The pictures showed zombies dressed as Nazis standing in the snow. The effects looked great and, from the film’s synopsis, I thought I was in for a really horrifying zombie flick. I was wrong. While DEAD SNOW does have some great-looking make-up effects, the film is not as frightening as it as it seems in the film’s production stills. Sure, the zombies look scary as all hell, but simply, what we get with this film is a funny, unoriginal film that is simply enjoyable, but not really scary.
DEAD SNOW follows a group of medical students on a trip into the desolate Norwegian mountains to hang out in a cabin and have some fun in the snow. All of the medical students, except one, are driving and taking a small hike to the cabin. Sara is a bit more adventurous and decides to hike the mountain range by herself and meet up with her friends at the cabin. When they arrive, they simply do what all students do in horror films: Get drunk, have sex and so on. Nevertheless, a knock on the door is about to change their vacation when a mad man knocks on the door and lets them know of the legend of the mountains. Groups of undead Nazis are on the mountain and will kill and eat anyone in their path. This turns out to be true, and the medical students find themselves in a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD situation, fighting zombies and trying not to get bitten.
While I respect what Writer/Director Tommy Wirkola and co-writer Stig Frode Henriksen are trying to accomplish with this film, and there is a good, solid script here, the two don’t bother to use a sense of originality when it comes to the story. The whole movie screams EVIL DEAD, with so many references to the film that I started to just roll my eyes after a while,. I was waiting for Bruce Campbell to pop onto the screen and say, “Give me some sugar baby!” There is a line in the beginning of the film where one of the characters talks about the first two EVIL DEAD films, and there is a shot-for-shot “tool shed” scene. To fully enjoy this film, you need to be a hardcore EVIL DEAD fan. It’s not that I don’t like EVIL DEAD, but I just expected something different.
The movie has great production values. The locations are not only breathtaking, but they also give an uneasy feeling that something is not right. The movie has out-of-this-world special effects, more in the area of make-up than in visual effects. The zombies look great and are probably the best-looking zombies I have seen in a film. The Nazi uniforms make them look even better, and give them more of an identity that signifies evil. The overall look and feel of the movie is great. There is decent editing and use of shots. The film also has some decent acting as well, but I found the characters to be more comical than serious. Still, I give the cast credit for being part of such a gore-filled production.
I did enjoy watching DEAD SNOW. It is filled with a lot of gore and has some really funny scenes that reminded me a lot of SHAUN OF THE DEAD. The zombies look really scary and their looks is haunting. However, this is where the movie lost me. I really feel that with such sinister-looking zombies, this film should have been a more serious horror film that could have scared the shit out of you. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Sure, the zombies look frightening, but the film is too comical for the viewer to be genuinely afraid. DEAD SNOW is not a serious horror film meant to scare the pants off the audience. It’s a movie that takes its references from other horror films and is meant to be more of a good time at the movies than a film that will be memorably scary. I had a great time watching it, but with such great-looking effects, I expected it to be something more.
– Horror Bob
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- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
