LUCIDMEDIA

Toronto After Dark – Dead Snow

Written by Andrew Skinner Friday, 21 August 2009 15:18

The zombie genre’s inventiveness never ceases to amaze me. Do not fear that this is Norwegian black metal alone. Far from it, it is gushing intestines of gore in an entertaining packaged vacation by director Tommy Wirkola. The dialogue and wit catered to English audiences is spot on in this thrilling snow ride. If you are asking yourself are Nazis not already frightening enough, and are zombies not bad enough? You would be wrong, Nazi-zombies are even worse! Zombies are just zombies after all.

The movie begins with a very likeable group of Norwegian medical students on their way to a cabin in the mountains for a winter vacation of skiing, snowmobiling, beer drinking, and maybe sex. Along the way, they joke that this is how many horror flicks actually begin and there’s bits of foreshadowing to look for too. They invite an older man hiking through the mountain, into their cabin and he sets up the coming storm beautifully. It is already a good movie at that point. As the old saying goes, you may not want war but war wants you, and the past comes back with a vengeance.

Neutrality and passive resistance didn’t work in 1940 and it’s not going to work now. The Nazi-zombies, a particularly mean battalion of German soldiers who were cruel to the local people have been hiding out and coveting greedily here in the mountains across the ages, waiting for revenge. They are up to something more than instinctual attacks like innocent, zombiefied victims who have lost their conscience from infection. They are a more advanced weapon trudging through the snow like Orcs.

Watching the film, our knowledge that the zombies lurking in the woods are Nazis is indeed more suspenseful, although it is not an entirely new menace as with Call of Duty’s Nazi-zombie level game. The weight of history is with them pressing against us. This film has fun with itself and the genre. Its not comedy horror per say but there’s lots of wit, “Whatever you do, don’t get bitten.” The characters are aware of zombie movie lore and behave how they think they should to protect themselves. Showing fear is all in the eyes and its here in this movie, plus I don’t really want to see these Norwegian kids get killed. Aside from one drunken sexual incident in a Norwegian porta-potty they are not the idiot morally vacant teens that always seem to ‘have it coming’.

You’ll find out soon enough why the Nazi-zombies would want to kill them -they have master plans. There is graphic novel vividness behind every white snow bank and one frightening claustrophobic scene topping even the movie The Descent. The film is menacing in the jaws of the surrounding mountains that could result in avalanche at any time. Chase scenes through the snow and woods are sports flick perfect and the beasts seem to lurch and march with robotic trooper menace. The fight scenes are never clumsy and are constructed to be believable enough to be scary and ridiculous enough that it prevents us from sliding down the slope to real gore sickness. Loved the raucous music. Nazi-zombies, ARISE!