Review of Dead Snow (2009) by Alexa S — 20 May 2010

There's nothing particularly new here. A bunch of students arrive a deserted cabin in the middle of nowhere to spend a vacation. As the drink and party one of their number fails to arrive but a creepy local does who imparts tales of dangers in the hills. As the party split up to try and find their missing friend they begin getting offed one by one by the evil menace that inhabits the mountains.

This is a mash-up of traditional 80 horrors - most of it could be found in either the Evil Dead, Friday 13th or Dawn of the Dead. but what lifts this above the average horror fayre is the location which gives a whole new twist to proceedings. Set in the mountains and fjords of Norway the action is snowbound throughout and some excellent camera work in the climactic chase scenes lends a sense of grandeur to proceedings that such a low budget film might not have achieved if it had been filmed in the US.

And added to that it also includes my new favourite breed of horror monster: Zombie-Nazis. now I'm never going to fail to love a film with those guys in. (Well that's not strictly true - Oasis of Zombies was dreadful).

The film is shot in Norwegian replete with English subtitles and for the most part the cast aren't the clichéd hunks you'd get in a US film - all of which actually helps ground the film somewhat and makes the horror more prominent.

The zombies themselves are pretty fast moving (no shuffling for these guys) and seem to have a major thing for entrails (almost every character ends up getting their insides scooped out and the Zombies sort of drape their intestines everywhere) which you assume is because the special effects guys had a neat new trick to play with. They donâ??t really do much else but relentlessly pursue the various characters before either getting hacked up or chowing down on some internal tubing.

If youâ??re a fan of Zombies and are not looking for anything with a massive moral or subtext (there arenâ??t any here â?? just Nazi zombies) and donâ??t turn your nose up at subtitles then itâ??s well worth a watch!