I don't know what it is about zombies that inspires passion. Of course, I speak of the age old debate, fast zombies vs. slow zombies. Simon Pegg (the eponymous Shaun in Shaun of the Dead) wrote about just this subject with much more thought and insight than I'll go into here. I fall firmly into the slow zombie category. It doesn't make sense to me that zombies can run. They are rotting flesh. Their limbs would go flying off. And running implies coordination. Why not have them climb trees? Don't think I can't enjoy a fast zombie every now and then. The Return of the Living Dead is fantastic fun and not only has the zombies run and think, but also talk (for the record, 28 Days Later does not have zombies and I wholly reject the term "zoombies").
Which brings us to Dead Snow, a film that seems to ignore the fact that Romero ever made Night of the Living Dead. A group of med students are off on a snowbound holiday at a remote cabin. And well, you can guess where it goes from there. To the films credit, the characters aren't annoying and while they are different personalities (well, the guys... the girls are mostly indistinguishable) there's a repartee and camaraderie that drives home why they are friends. It also makes it fun to be with them. I also dug that the trip isn't just about drinking and sex. They spend a lot of time playing in the snow and being disappointed by Twister. The vacation felt like a real vacation and not what Hollywood thinks young people do on a trip.
Of course, as with seemingly every horror movie made these days, one of the characters is a huge movie nerd. I struggle with this type of character (because I see too much of myself represented? Nah) because it feels like a cheap way for the director and writer to tell the audience that, "yeah, we know you've seen this before. But since you know we know, it's not derivative, it's referential." And references abound, though they mostly stick with Raimi. At this point, I think it would be a mistake to ignore the impact of zombies on culture at large. It's common knowledge how to kill zombies and the movie nerd tells everyone not to get bitten, but at no point do the explicitly try to destroy the brain. Sure, lots of zombie skulls get crushed, but there's just as many that get shot or chainsawed in the chest that die just the same.
None of that really matters anyway because, as I've said, these aren't you mother's zombies. These are Nazi zombies. And they aren't driven by a desire for brains. Oh no. They want the gold that they hid 60 years ago. They're more concerned with tearing you apart than eating you, though they'll have a nibble if it comes to it but only after a nice form tackle. Nazi zombies think. They fuck with you. They use tools. And yes, they climb trees. But they die easier, so there's that. Why they aren't affected by the freezing cold? Because they're revisionist zombies, that's why.
Believe it or not, I mostly enjoyed Dead Snow. It's shot very well and doesn't have an overly processed look that so many movies these days have. Because the zombies are so formidable, tension is pretty consistent and there are some pretty amazing scenes of carnage (the final, big showdown is my favorite). It's pretty funny, though there are times that the attempts at comedy are inappropriate (note to screenwriters: it's appropriate to have a character complain, "I told you we should have gone to the beach" while they are under attack but NOT as a button line to a scene where two of his friends died. It comes off as unsympathetic and tells the audience that the characters aren't worth caring about.)
Some final quibbles. I really wish the Wandering Expositioner was a skilled zombie hunter. That could have ramped up the movie a bit. And what is the deal with the zombies just lying under sheets of snow? Do they have to be summoned? What happens when the snow melts? How were they not discovered earlier? Once again, "the plausibles." If you get by your preconception of what a zombie is, Dead Snow is pretty fun. As with most movies, there's stuff that doesn't make sense, but the horror genre is very forgiving as long as the movie delivers the goods and this one mostly does.
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