I freaking love Dead Snow, but then I also place Lake Placid 3 in high regard.
Scandinavia has been responsible for a lot of cool shit. Hot tubs, bleak thrillers, chemically sweet ciders, Let the Right One In and slightly less auspiciously, a Norwegian zombie movie called Dead Snow. A film that on its own promo poster proclaims itself as one of the 25 best zombie films ever made.
What this is compared to I’m not sure. It might be one of the 25 best zombie films from Norway. Or one of 25 best zombie films to come out of a Norwegian film class.
The real question is, can you name 25 zombie movies made before 2009? And if you can, then put this film 25th on that list and ask yourself what is it below it? That gives you a pretty good gauge of what this film is like.
Dead Snow revolves around a plucky group of students going on a fun-filled ski-trip on the Norwegian mountains. They get stuck in some wood lodge with a ‘mystical history’. Zombie terror ensues.
I freaking love it. But I also place Lake Placid 3 in high regard, therefore I’m just going to list three facts about Dead Snow and you can decide for yourself if this is something you want to watch.
- It’s subtitled but you don’t need to concentrate to follow the plot. It’s pretty well… acted(?) enough to follow along while doing other crap, like ordering your weekly shop from Sainsbury’s.
- The film location is beautiful, so expect plenty of snow-capped mountain scenes as well as scenes of young pretty people having a blast out on those mountains with snowmobiles. And cool black and white scenes from the ‘Nazi strategy meeting archive’. Oh wait, I mentioned the zombies were Nazi zombies, right?
- Inglorious Basterds, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Das Boot. All great films, but how much more fun would they be if they made the Nazis zombies? This film tackles this question, and tackles it hard. Turns out the answer is “pretty awesome.”
I may have missed out some of the real gems of this film, but that’s because I want you to discover them for yourself (yeah, that’s right). Oh and once it’s got you hooked, it’s… okay. There’s also a sequel, Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead. I probably won’t be allowed to review that.
For more spine-chilling thrills to watch over Halloween, check out our complete 31 days of horror movies list.
