Dead Snow

Reviewed by:
Eric Alt

Directed by: Tommy Wirkola

The Skinny: Take your typical horror movie set-up—a bunch of horny kids hole up in a cabin in the woods where bad things happened long ago—but make the kids Norwegian, the cabin a snow-lodged mountain retreat, and the "bad things" a pack of roving Nazi zombies and you have Dead Snow. Yes, that's right, we said "Nazi zombies."

The Good: The setting is novel enough to, at least initially, get you over the hump of just how cliche the movie is—when's the last time your zombie movie had snow and Norwegian subtitles?—and the movie is dead set on having fun with its premise. So there are a few more laughs than scares, and the gore is much more Evil Dead than Hostel (witness one scene where a character dangles off a cliff holding onto the entrails of a gutted zombie).

The Bad: Ultimately, the cliches overwhelm. Not only are all the characters just Norwegian versions of every horror movie character you've ever met, but the Nazi zombie element—let's face it, the movie's sole selling point—ends up being a gimmick with no pay-off. In the end, nothing happens that couldn't have happened with regular, street-clothed zombies. Their being Nazis has really no impact other than the shock element of seeing undead creatures wearing swastikas. In the end, this is disappointingly run-of-the-mill.

New Buzzword: If Dead Snow takes off, will it spawn a new horror sub-genre like "gorno"? Maybe Nor-no? Sno-no?

Theater, DVD or TNT in Five Years: This is a rental. It's fun, but nothing special.

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