Synopsis?

Gore, sex, gore and a Zulu-scale army of  zombies that (being zombies) fail to die, promising to return with another ambush of violence on the film-maker’s next cast of  swimwear models.

Sounds pretty standard, except actually I may have missed a few minor details. The zombies are in fact WWII Nazis… angry Nazis led by the amicable Standartenfuhrer Herzog in search of a big ol’ stash of Nazi gold and a veritable feast of gormless teenage flesh. The film-makers profess this fantastically ridiculous horror film to be one of the comic variety, but for the fullest appreciation of this Nordic export it is best to imagine that the humour is wholly unintentional.

Snow is it really any good?

Having already decided that Dead Snow was a masterpiece before I’d so much as inserted the DVD, I wondered at my own frivolity, but from start to finish, the film regularly serves up disastrously entertaining scenes to justify what might have been a young and fanciful impulse. The first comes when the group’s token tubster ventures from the cabin to the outhouse to go about his business… only to be joined by an impossibly good-looking female member of the party who is inexplicably pursuing a very different kind of business. As he is sat a-squat a cold (and frankly unsanitary) lavatory, the insatiable- and quite clearly emotionally vulnerable- young lady naturally takes advantage of his compromised position. In one brief and beautiful moment of cinema, the tone is set for the rest of the film with an intricate juxtaposition of defecation, bafflingly unmatched seduction and zombie attack. Who could possibly object to such a generous feast?

Nor way! But does this mean it’s all unrelenting violence and not a lot else?

Well, yes and no. As somebody who will unfailingly daydream for at least 11 minutes of any film bar the exceptional, I can honestly salute Dead Snow for its unceasing delivery of action and scenes that move far, far beyond the realm of odd into the gulf of really bloody bizarre. And, as the group get taken out one by one in all manner of imaginatively disgusting ways, a glimmer of pathos shines through in the form of one sorry looking man: Martin. Poor Martin. The bespectacled nice-guy has had a rough enough time witnessing the steady slaughter of his friends, but it really is the straw that breaks the camel’s back when he accidentally hacks up his girlfriend. How does one accidentally hack up one’s girlfriend, you may ask? Well, if I have learnt anything from this film, it is to never silently tap my boyfriend on the shoulder in the event that he is mutilating a zombie with a chainsaw in a blind fit of rage. Unfortunately that’s not even the last of Martin’s unfortunate lot, but by the time it comes to the self-amputation that turns out to be unnecessary, he’s really been knocked down a few too many times to care.

So wrong, but so right, Dead Snow is dead brilliant.

Special Features

*Norwegian Language Film with English Subtitles and Dubbed English Language Track
*Behind Dead Snow
*Special Make-up Effects Of Dead Snow
*Madness In The North – Making-of Featurette
*Madness In The West! – Cast and Crew fly to Sundance Film Festival for Premiere
*Burning The Cabin
*The Sounds Of Dead Snow