Zombies!!! in the snow!!!!

Welcome back readers.  First, an apology for my apparent slackerocity kicking in and me not keeping up on this like I intended.  I'll do my best to get back into the swing of things.  And to start things off, I'm going with a movie recommended to me by my favorite muppet and in one of my favorite genres, horror.  I've always said that horror movies make the best comedies, and if you take the time to watch this film, you'll get where I'm coming from.


This time, I watched "Dead Snow", a Swedish film (don't run yet just cause it's foreign) directed by Tommy Wirkola.  This film is your basic horror/zombie experience.  A group of students go off on vacation by themselves into the wilderness.  They shack up in a cabin in the mountains and start having their vacation debauchery; drinking, sex, etc.  Stop me if you've heard this before.... (but don't really).   One of the characters sees someone place a box full of gold into the shack and then disappears.  He fears that his girlfriend, who hasn't shown up yet, is in danger and goes off to find her.  And this dear readers, is where the fun (and some more of the predictability) starts.  This film has almost everything you'd expect from your classic horror film; girls go off into the unknown by themselves to examine strange noises, people saying "I'll be right back", even the creepy old local who arrives randomly and who's only point in the movie is to explain the frightening history of the area before getting killed off.  In fact, the only thing it leaves out is the gratuitous nudity.  In this way, the movie makes you wonder if you've just settled in for another knock off of every other zombie movie.  And then BAM!  Nazis.


Wait, what?  That's right, I said it.  What's scarier than a zombie movie?  Nazi zombies.  Throw in being stranded in a remote mountain location and we've got a horror film folks.  What the crazy local reveals is that the area they are in was actually near a village where, during WW II, Nazis holed up and tortured the locals until being driven into the mountains.  Just a creepy old guys tale... until one of them falls through a hole and into a tunnel system full of Nazi paraphernalia.  That and all the dead guys in soldier uniforms going around killing folks.  You can pretty much guess how the movie plays out from here; people running around screaming and fending for themselves, zombie attacks every 3 minutes, no way out.  Classic.  Not so classic?  The graphic and gruesome nature.  Seriously, you expect blood and guts, but this movie puts emphasis on blood and guts.  You haven't lived until you've seen Nazis zombies literally rip a guy into pieces, or a man rappelling down a cliff side while holding on to a zombie's intestines.  That's just good, quality writing right there.


This movie also does some nice throwbacks/tributes to other zombie movies.  Several scenes are shot in the cut away fashion of "Shaun of the Dead" and "Evil Dead 2" (both quality films, Evil Dead 2 being one of the best horror movies ever).  And apparently Tommy thought so too because he added more throw backs to the film;  the raiding of a shed for weapons and finding a chainsaw while maintaining the quick cutaway shots, even a guy amputating his own arm after being bitten.


  The film did a back and forth job with both the lighting and the music.  Throughout a lot of the movie, a dark and ominous tone was set by the use of shadows and dim colors.  This was followed by a cheesy sort of look with all the brightness and whiteness that I didn't much care for (side note, frozen blood in snow looks awesome).  Also, the music did a great job in several parts with some eerie tunes, but then followed up with random rock songs.  A bit of opinion here... : I hate that horror movies have shied away from the solid idea that 'less is more'.  In the classics, the music is pretty much just tones and notes by instruments and this provides an incredibly creepy feel to the movie (think Halloween, Friday the 13th, etc.)  I don't know when horror movies decided to try and scare you with whatever loud popular rock music is available, but it ain't workin.


This movie had a lot of pros, but some pretty glaring and annoying cons.  The only sex scene in the movie involved WAY too much poop (a sentence I never thought I'd write).  There are a lot of mistakes made by the hikers that are just silly (ie: miss-throwing a Maltov cocktail and burning down your own shelter).  People appear and disappear at random places in random times.  They initially state that there's no cell phone service (duh), but then brilliant hiker #3 decides to try anyways and gets a hold of some emergency line in the last 20 minutes only to have his phone die.  Lame.  And then the the main character rolls up on his snowmobile in which he magically found and attached a machine gun to?  Lamer.  Most annoyingly is the guy who is built up throughout the movie as this lame med student who faints at the sight of blood (and they address this multiple times).  He apparently forgets all this, even when bucket upon bucket of blood is dumped on him and just keeps on truckin and killin.  I thought it'd be funny to bring that back and was disappointed it wasn't.


But don't get me wrong.  This movie excelled in a lot of areas.  They got very creative with their techniques for killing zombies.  The overall campy feel mixed just right with a contrast of scenes that actually made you jump.  Even the ending left me satisfied with everything I had wanted (a rare occurrence).  For this reason, I'm giving this movie a 7 out of 10.  It's not the best zombie movie I've ever seen, but it's a hell of a lot better than a lot of the ones I have.  Maybe I'm biased cause I enjoy kitschy horror, but as I hope to have proved with this film, so should you.


So watch, enjoy, laugh, or be scared.  But check out this movie.  Cause in the end, the moral is that birds ruin everything, and snot saves the day!  Special thanks to my pal Chase.  Happy viewing.  Auf Wiedersehen!