a SIFF 2009 review
Bloody Snow Hardly Dead
Eight Norwegian medical students (Charlotte Frogner, Stig Frode Henriksen, Vegar Hoel, Jeppe Laursen, Evy Kasseth Røsten, Jenny Skavlan, Ane Dahl Torp, Lasse Valdal) travel to the secluded mountain lodge of one of their compatriots to spend the weekend skiing and to ride snow mobiles. In the middle of their first night they are interrupted by a mysterious wanderer (Bjørn Sundquist) who tells them the fantastic WWII tale of the homicidal Nazi Colonel Herzog (Ørjan Gamst), the man ruling the region with an iron fist so sadistic everyone was scared to death of him. Over a half-century later, people are still afraid, no one venturing into the hills under the suspicion he and his men might still be lurking about somewhere.
The zombies go marching into battle in IFC Films' Dead Snow
Other than giving them a start over a bowl of soup, the group pays the man’s story no heed. Pity, because then they would have been ready for the militant zombie uprising staring at them. Now their weekend of relaxation and play has become a bloody battle for survival, the whole team ready to do whatever dismembering it takes to get out of the cabin and back to civilization alive.
Obviously, those expecting something like last year’s Nordic sensation Let the Right One In certainly have another thing coming. The splatter-filled horror-comedy hybrid Dead Snow isn’t exactly trying to work on an intellectual level, director Tommy Wirkola’s wintry bloodbath obviously coming from a place more akin to The Evil Dead or Braindead than it is anything else. This is a balls to the walls intestinal gross-out that wants to make a person laugh just as much as they are shrieking in terror, the whirligig of sight gags, kills and dismemberments so over the top and appropriately disgusting both Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson would probably howl in approval.
As such, this isn’t so much a movie you review as you sit back, relax, put your brain on neutral and try your best to enjoy for the carnage and chaos it is. For the most part, I was able to do just that with extreme ease, Wirkola and Stig Frode Henriksen's script doing a great job paying homage to those who have come before while also cutting their own idiosyncratic genre path. I can actually say the pair kept me on my toes much of the way through, and while a few of the deaths are rather predictable some of them are certainly anything but.
What I didn’t like was the pair’s attempt to have their cake and eat it to. With a movie like this, you almost have to make the decision to play it straight or go right away for the absurdic funny bone. Unless you’re a directorial genius it’s better to just choose a path and go for it, mixing them both together only a fast way to alienate the audience and transform them from rooting compatriot to overly annoyed enemy in one single blow.
While I wouldn’t go so far to say that happened to me here, it did come awfully close. There is a moment near the end where the filmmakers decided to give their film an extra emotional component it never had (and didn’t need) by lifting one of the more shocking kills from Neil Marshall’s The Descent and offing one of their more rootable characters in just about the worst way possible.
I’m not saying they couldn’t have died; they just shouldn’t have died like this. It’s pointless and inane, and if Wirkola thought he was gaining anything by suddenly trying to pull on my heartstrings I admit I couldn’t quite figure out what that might have been. The truth was that all this did was upset me, this attempt to give all the cartoonish idiocy weight nothing more than a serious waste of time.
Still, this is a movie about mutant Nazi zombies for gosh sakes, and the fact I’m even spending all this time talking about it is kind of ridiculous. The film moves like lightening, has some of the most visually creative kills that I’ve seen in ages and has so many laughs I swear I almost gagged on my popcorn (and that’s a good thing). For genre fanatics, Dead Snow is as close to a must-see as anything released this year, and while I can’t say I’m totally happy with the finished product I still had enough of a good time watching it I hardly expect it to end up rotting away in forgotten anonymity.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
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