Dead Snow (2009)

"Ein! Zwei! Die!".

That, together with the tagline to The Mutilator, is one of the best taglines I've ever seen. It also sets the standard for Dead Snow, the new norwegian nazi-zombie-epic from director Tommy Wirkola. Not that he has made any other in the genre, but I really hope there will be a sequel to this one. If he dosen't choose the road like all other splatter-directors out there: becomes serious and making family comedies for a quick buck.

A couple of med students are going for vaction up in the beautiful (in a distance, I've been up in the fucking mountains here in Scandinavia and I hated every second of it) norwegian mountains. What they don't know is that the area is cursed! A troup of nazis got lost in the mountains and has now become bloodthirsty zombies willing to kill everything in their way to protect and find their hidden nazi-treasures. Our group of heros defend themselves, first barricading themselves in a cabin and then out in the white, cold open!

As with the boring and traditional Rovdyr this movie don't offer anything new. It's a combination between every zombie-movie you can think and even John Carpenters The Fog. But here we have a talented director and bunch of fun actor and bucket after bucket of gore and blood. And it's looks great to! There's more gore than foreign counterparts and limbs and brains a splashing over the screen. As with a lot of movies with younger characters, they are not especially interesting. Not even here. We have the stiff guy that's afraid of blood, the fat film nerd, some sexy girls and so on. We even have an "old man of warning", who really get's what he deserves. 

The locations are great and is a nice wallpaper to all the blood and gore. Have I mentioned that this movie has blood and gore? I'm not sure. There's decaptions, head-rippings... yes, every kinda way to destroy a head. And now I haven't mentioned the rest of the body! The bad thing is, as usual, that the filmmakers are very aware of what they're doing and trying to make fun of the idea of nazi-zombies. They have the boring film references that we've seen to death and it lacks the seriousness that I think would have made this movie a small masterpiece. Now it's "just" a great and fun splatter-flick that fit's perfect with a beer and some friends.

It's nice to see that Norway is helping Scandinavia to get some respect in the horror community now. Sweden is, as usual, the worst film country in the world and should be ashamed of all the lousy crap-movies that we producing. Denmark is still good, thank Buddha for that, but Norway has a special place in my heart from now one - as a relative of the great Roald Amundsen and a non-patriot of Sweden.