Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
disliked it.
It's been a while since a great big gore-filled gross-out horror comedy has hit the scene. With the gonzo days of
Peter Jackson far behind him (for the time being), and
Sam Raimi resigned to PG-13-land with the otherwise fantastic
Drag Me to Hell, big and small screens alike have been missing the hysterical buckets-of-blood days of yore. This could be the reason that so much was made of the Norwegian midnight-film-festival hit, Dead Snow. Upon further review, one has to wonder whether the outpouring of drunken applause was due more to the slapstick-meets-Grand Guignol nature of the flick than to the manner in which it pulls it off. Make no mistake -- Dead Snow certainly delivers the nasty goods, but as it proves, it's far easier to chop off limbs than chomp on audiences' funny bones.
Some might think that fright fanatics are a forgiving sort -- and in a way, they are. Poll any proud member of your local horror-minded geek set and you'd find out just how many horrible horror movies they've had to ingest just to weed out the rubbish from the choice cuts. The side effects of this vary -- some fans become more forgiving of the genre they love so much, while others tend to refuse to stoop down to lesser outings (especially modern ones) because they've been burned before. One subgenre where this comes into play is the zombie film. Now that zombies are chic, there are some movie maniacs who still can't get enough, with just as many on the other side of the demarcation line calling for "enough!" This holds especially true for any production whose selling point is doing a spin on the undead for blatant promotional purposes (à la
Zombie Strippers). Despite its best efforts, Dead Snow partly falls into this category, thanks to its use of zombie Nazis -- a worn-out gimmick that somehow still gets people excited, despite the fact that nothing too interesting has been done with this idea since it appeared on the scene with 1977's
Shock Waves.
Cue in Dead Snow -- an admirable yet worn-out low-budgeter that brazenly wears its influences on its sleeve, so much so that a character proudly wears a
Braindead T-shirt (in honor of
Peter Jackson's
Dead Alive) while constantly quoting everything from slasher flicks to
Indiana Jones. While it would be interesting to see a horror nerd take on the stuff of his dreams, Dead Snow misses that boat by a long shot. The basic plot boils down to this: A group of horny college kids heads to the mountains to go snowboarding. They soon discover that Nazi gold is hidden within their cabin, prompting a hoard of Third Reich flesh-eaters to essentially ruin what was a fun-filled vacation scored to pop-punk tunes.
Despite the snarky dig, what holds Dead Snow back from being considered a classic isn't the extreme musical choices -- or its stock characters. What truly sinks the film is the fact that it's just not that funny. Gory gags explode across the screen dozens of times throughout the film, yet there's not one belly laugh in the whole flick. When those gags come, the comedy is overly obvious and will have a hard time holding any weight with those who have seen it all before. By the time the "gearing-up" scene occurs, flush with Raimi zooms and sound effects, it's obvious what this is -- a collage of genre staples taken from the masters. Your enjoyment of it might just depend on how worn-out you are on second-rate imitators, no matter if their hearts are in the right place or not. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide