Zombies in film: Dead Snow

"Ein! Zwei! Die!"

Film: Dead Snow

Directed by Tommy Wirkola

Written by Tommy Wirkola and Stig Henriksen

Produced by Euforia Film, Barentsfilm As, and Miho Film

Story: The group of collage students go up to a cabin in the woods (sound familiar? The film does pay homeage to the classics which take place in similar settings.) Only to find a treasure chest full of Nazi gold! A crazed old man warns them of Nazi Zombies that guard the area and that they should leave. Of course paying the old man no heed the young adults go about their partying ways until all hell suddenly breaks loose and bloody battle comences.

Zombies: The zombies in this film are a mystical/secentific secret weapon made by those crazy Nazis during the war. They are fast, can fight to some extent and follow a leader. Let's talk about the leader first, he is a Nazi commander and his sole purpose is to protect this gold it would seem. The other zombies seem to have just enough intelligence to do what he wants them to (without orders being issued.) Which I suppose makes some sort of sense since these are some sort of mystical zombies. All in all these aren't your typical zombies but they are relatively dumb, they are bad at fighting, and they transfer the infection through bites which when not under orders from the commander seems to be their only goal (that is a little back to normal.) The zombies are also not killed by blows to the head, they are killed in basically any way that would kill a human. Oddly however all of these things that clearly make them not true zombies can be over looked (to some degree) in this film, maybe because they are Nazis, maybe because the film rests in that middle ground between poor-indy film and blockbuster, who knows, I should but I don't.

Survival Lessons:

• Don't set up a tent in an area you know has zombies in it,  in fact don't stay in an area you warn others to leave because of zombies.
• Don't let zombies get near your nads.
• Don't steal.
• Esspecially don't steal 50 year old treasure chests of Nazi gold.
• Mandatory military service does come in handy for preparing the average person.
• Your vehicle can always be a weapon.
• If you can't aim, don't throw Molotov Cocktails.
• Girls suck at fighting zombies (apparently.)

Warnings: Parts of this movie get absurd and a little disturbing in the name of "humor."

In the end this movie is entertaining and to be fair it was 2AM when I watched it and I had been doing special effects for four hours. So I am taking this into account when passing judgement. I have a few issues with the movie and it does not deserve all the fame it is getting in the zombie world. Everything is exactly what you would expect from a medium budget movie, so I wouldn't say it was bad or good. It was basically right in the middle of the road. It had some great moments, like two guys running into a horde of zombies and slaughtering them two at a time; or a blue-eyed handsome Norweign man fighting zombies regardless of his wounds and bravely sewing up the bites on his neck. But it also had its awful moments, like very obvious special effects during a few fights, poor humor and a predicable story. I will give them props however for choosing to do a story set in winter in the mountains: it offers a lot of challenges as a film maker but also means very few chances to have girls strip down and get the "sex appeal" so many films -regardless of budget- try to rely on without realizing every other film has done the same thing and no matter what the internet or real life will always do it better.

Stay frosty, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.