Dead Nazi Snow

Media / 7/24/2009 7:45:22 PM

We are on a roll here with new Chicago article writers joining the Killer-works fold. This time it's the lovely and demented Gracie Hagen bringing us her rather excited endorsement of a horror film from Norway that was an Official 2009 Sundance Film Fest Selection. Another notable Norwegian horror on the heels of "Let the Right One In"...Something wonderfully horrible must be happening over there

Being the nazi-sploitation, horror film fanatic (emphasis on horror), when I saw the trailer for Dead Snow (below) I creamed my pants! Both genres I love meshed together into one big happy film! In the months to come, whilst anxiously awaiting its release, my hopes and expectations grew to Godzilla-like proportions. I realized that this was probably not the best thing to do for a film because I was so excited it was sure to let me down. Fortunately, upon viewing, my hopes and expectations were not let down. It lived up to every goddamn one of them!

Director Tommy Wirkola obviously has seen more than just a few horror films in his time. I picture him as a twenty-something film student who sits around with his friends and talks about the merits of Terror Train to Jaime Lee Curtis's career (and David Copperfield's for that matter). The dialogue is riddled with nerdy horror/exploitation jokes and references, but not the pretentious kind that make you feel stupid and hate yourself. The action and gore sequences also go towards Wirkola's horror point bank. Kill scenes were varied and the blood, what excited me the most, was the blood. A lot of films get this part wrong, they forget that living things have a pulse. When someone gets sliced, the blood that is spurting everywhere shouldn't just be a constant stream; it's got to have the pulsating squirt. Wirkola got that, along with scare shots, guts, and comedy.

This film is grouped in the horror sub-genre of "College kids out for vacation that plan to have lots of sex and booze but will soon be killed". With most films in this sub-genre, the comedy angle fails miserably. Dead Snow makes me feel warm and fuzzy because it made me believe that these kids are friends, have actual connections with one another, and I believe their reactions to the situations that they're put in (well as much as one can believe a film where dead Nazi's come to life to get their gold back)

Hats off to the actors and script. It was written by Wirkola and Stig Frode Henriksen, both acted in the film. You've got to appreciate a film in which the cast is also the crew. What also impressed me was the aesthetics and lighting throughout made me feel like the art director knew what he was doing and cared about the film. Additionally, the framing seemed to be meticulously planned out. Which brings me to the soundtrack, I don't know if the soundtrack was a compilation of the crew's favorite songs or they actually picked the songs to match the scene. This is my one teensy half-assed fault with this film. After the third song I was ready to download the entire soundtrack and as standalone music I'm behind it 100%, but it didn't always work in the context of the film.

Overall, I think this movie shows what it's like to have a horror film made by people who care about and love cinema so much that they do it right. I hope I haven't built the film up to Godzilla-like proportions because not everyone can be the Nazi fetishist as I am! On the whole, Dead Snow is definitely worth checking out!

Gracie Hagen