DOD SNO (DEAD SNOW)

Norway, 2009, 95 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Tommy Wirkola.

This film is a Norwegian horror film (like the Cold Prey films) set in the snows of frozen Norway. However, ludicrous as it may sound, it is a film about Nazi zombies terrorising a group of young medical students. At times the film is not as ludicrous as it sounds. At other times it is far more ludicrous, playing the horror for laughs from horror fans rather than indulging in creepiness. The creepiest scene involves a stranger who warns the young students about the dangers of the terrain, a red herring, because his throat is slit in his own tent.

The film also references a number of horror films including Friday the 13th, April Fools Day and The Evil Dead. It makes explicit the parallels with this story of the medical students going on an Easter break, going into the mountains, becoming pally with each other, overtones of sexual banter, then the horror as the dead Nazis who had occupied this part of Norway during the war and who were turned on by the inhabitants, sent out into the snow to die and have become zombies, wreak their revenge, also looking for a box of coins of the period (which seemed to be fairly easy to find). While all this happens in the 21st century, it is a wonder, realism in mind, that all this has not happened decades before. Then, at the end, it may have, because the Nazi commander is able to raise his dead zombies to new life – and a possible sequel.

The film is better than the average horror film of its kind, not taking itself too seriously. The characters are a cut above the regular teenagers from this kind of film. However, about halfway through, when the horror starts to overtake the plot, there seemed to be no holds barred in the decapitations, slicings and gashings. The Nazis pursuing the remaining men and women goes right over the top in terms of visual horror so that it defies realism and therefore elicits laughs, sympathetic laughs from the horror audience.

There are some eerie moments – and some odd moments as one of the characters, a medical student, wants to avoid being bitten by the zombies and saws off his own arm in amputation. It is that kind of film.

(However, the technical aspects of the film are of a high quality, especially the visuals in the beautiful Norwegian snowy mountains.)

The director was in his late twenties when he made this film and had previously made a comedic satire on Kill Bill.