Dead Snow (www.the-usher.com)

"Ein! Zwei! Die!"

Enjoying their winter break, Martin (Hoel), Roy (Henriksen), Hanna (Frogner), Vegard (Valdal), Liv (Rosten), Erlend (Laursen) and Chris (Skavlan) head to the Norwegian mountains for some skiing and partying. When the last of their party Sara (Torp) doesn’t arrive, Vegard goes looking for her but as the others try to have fun while they are away, they realise that they are not alone on the mountainside. The area has an evil past, one that has been rumoured to return during the wintertime every year since the end of the Second World War because the mountains are invested with flesh eating Nazi zombies.

When it comes to thinking of a horror premise that will add some vigour to an already saturated niche of the horror genre, then you can’t get much better than Nazi zombies.

As Hollywood struggles discover new ideas that will reinvigorate the horror genre, all the while offering us endless sequels and remakes of classic 70s and 80s hits, European cinema has been pushing the genre on, just as the Asian industry has. Films like ‘The Orphanage’, ‘REC’ and ‘Let the Right One In’ has show you can bring something different to a ghost, zombie or vampire movie but what you can also do is return to what makes horror such an imaginative genre.

Mixing horror and comedy has worked in films like ‘Shaun of the Dead’, ‘Braindead’ and ‘The Evil Dead’ franchise and Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola and his creative team have done just that with ‘Dead Snow’. While the movie follows the conventions of many a horror movie that has gone before it, young people alone in a secluded spot with no method of getting help, it throws in something way out their into the mix, Nazi zombies. While the undead Third Reich might not be a cinematic first and has been the mainstay of many a video game, ‘Dead Snow’ uses them as an organised battalion of killing machines, to great effect.

When the story of a vicious platoon of Nazi SS soldiers torturing, killing and plundering the local townsfolk of this remote Norwegian mountain region during WWII is told to our band of medical students, they never expected those evil men to be still patrolling those mountains over sixty years later. As they start getting killed in gruesome ways one by one until the undead Nazi horde attack their cabin, they realise that they are in for the fight of their lives. With a slight added plot of them finding the missing plundered gold and silver of the local villagers and that the Nazi had been driven into the mountains after the villagers revolted, this is a zombie horror flick that is set up for a blood bath and it delivers.

If it is blood and guts that you want to see, then ‘Dead Snow’ is the movie for you. When the surviving students decide to take the fight to the undead Nazis, the gore, the blood and the comedy step up a level. With the use of chainsaws, machine and shot guns, knives, axes and anything else they can get their hands on, the fight is taken to the zombie hordes in a fashion that will have you laughing as much as you are wincing.

‘Dead Snow’ is a fun, gore filled Nazi zombie movie. With buckets of blood and guts, a daft story and some inventive killings, this is a horror movie that might not reinvigorate the genre but it sure as hell has fun with it.

Not Available

Shaun of the Dead

The Usher Home | Hush, Hush... | The Big Story | The Usher Speaks

Stuck @ Home | Coming Soon | Links | Contact the Usher

2009