User reviews

The mandatory circumstances to watch a movie like "Dead Snow" are as follows: at a horror themed festival amongst hundreds of outrageously enthusiast and derailed fellow genre fanatics - preferably at 3am on a weekend night – and surrounded by booze and snacks. If this shouldn't be possible, try and gather as many friends together for a drunken movie night, but whatever you do, don't watch this cheerfully repugnant and positively demented movie all by yourself as it is too much of a crowd-pleaser! The formula of laugh-evoking zombie splatter movies isn't new (even Nazi zombie movies have been done before, for example "Shock Waves" and "Zombie Lake"), but spirited and ambitious young filmmakers never cease to invent original variations on the sub genre. Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola took his cast & crew high up north, for a splatter film in a beautiful and isolated snowy setting. A group of medical students – that are also die-hard horror movie freaks – trek to a remote mountain cabin for a weekend of snow scooter fun, drinking and casual sex. The first night of their arrival already, they receive a visit from a mysterious and grumpy old local who tells them a grotesquely absurd story about sinister events that occurred in the area near the end of WWII. The atmospheric tale says that fed up villagers combined forces and chased their Nazi occupants into the mountains where they all froze to death. The clique laughs away the warnings, but subsequently discovers a box of old coins that promptly resurrects an army of Nazi soldiers in a far developed state of decomposition. The first half of "Dead Snow" is slow-paced, atmospheric and full of little tributes to classic zombie movies; particularly "The Evil Dead" movies. The students are standard horror stereotypes, including the nerd and the blond bimbo, and thus the first half also contains childish pranks and gratuitous sex sequences. As soon as the Nazi zombies emerge, however, "Dead Snow" is a non-stop spitfire of blood, gore and intestines. Apparently the production of this film required 450 liters of fake blood, and that isn't nearly so surprising if you watch the end result. There's chainsaw action, decapitations, rope pulling with intestines, axe murders, machine gun concerts and disembowelment. The effects are top-notch in spite of the obvious budgetary restrictions, and the make up art on the zombies is very impressive. The rotting uniformed corpses look quite menacing, especially their leader. The snowy landscapes are beautiful picture to behold, although it's even more amusing to see the white snow color red with blood! Tommy Wirkola is a clearly talented director and hopefully a promising long career awaits him.

I enjoyed this movie more than I should have done, which makes you question why does a really basic idea with absolutely no plot, logic or common sense make for good viewing? Because it was fun.

All that matters when it comes to movies of this genre is that you feel satisfied by the rolling credits and your brain receives the right amount of serotonin or whatever mood enhancer your brain requires. If you want to look at the technical aspects of this film, it was total nonsense, but who cares when a zombie flick like this provides all the gratuitous stupidity and gore you could realistically ask for?

Often, movies of this ilk take themselves too seriously and try to be bigger than their net worth, when instead they should be chucking hordes of rabid zombies and entrails at you instead, with buckets and buckets of blood!

There are some really good laughs in this one: recommended.

And that's why I cant give it a rating. I froze my arse of being under shovles of snow, waiting to stand up as a zombie nazi. I do think it's a really fun splatter horror comedy, and the direction by Tommy (Wirkola) told me he would go on to bigger projects. It's by far the most entertaining and cold experience in my short life in movies. More fun was the world premiere in Tromsø, where about 1/4 of the invited audience left the cinema when the gorefest started. Highly recomandation from a biased member of the Død Snø crew!

Død snø is directed by Tommy Wirkola who also co-writes the screenplay with Stig Frode Henriksen, the alter of whom also co-stars. It stars Vegar Hoel, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kasseth Røsten, Jeppe Beck Laursen, Jenny Skavlan, Ane Dahl Torp and Bjørn Sundquist. Music is by Christian Wibe and cinematography by Matthew Bradley Weston.

A group of Norwegian medical students vacationing in the snowy countryside find themselves menaced by Nazi Zombies!

It's one for the Zombie and Splatter crowd is this, a Norwegian comedy horror fusion that revels in homaging its influences as much as it does swimming in blood. It's not particularly fresh of course, as the story follows a familiar course that sees a bunch of youngsters killed off one by one, though the foe, in the shape of grizzly looking Nazi Zombies, is cheerfully put to menacing, and funny, use.

A little back story is brought into play courtesy of a mysterious hiker who stops by the cabin for a coffee, and then at the mid-point all hell (literally) breaks loose and it's The Alamo out in the snow. Genre staples are adhered to, complete with stereotype characters, and Wirkola has a keen eye for gruesome killings and dismemberment. It doesn't add new fuel to the genre fire, it just keeps it alight and has great fun doing so. 7/10

The medical students Martin (Vegar Hoel), Roy (Stig Frode Henriksen) and Erlend (Jeppe Beck Laursen) travel with their friend Vegard (Lasse Valdal) to meet with the girls Hanna (Charlotte Frogner), Liv (Evy Kasseth Røsten) and Chris (Jenny Skavlan) and spend vacation in the isolated cabin in the wilderness of Øksfjord that belongs to Vegard's girlfriend Sara (Ane Dahl Torp).

When they arrive, the do not find Sara but they believe she is practicing sports on the snow. Soon a weird traveler (Bjørn Sundquist) visits them and tells the story about the resistance of the locals during the World War II against the Nazi invaders that were pursued and assumed frozen to death.

On the next morning, Vegard drives his snowmobile seeking out Sara in the mountains. Meanwhile his friends are attacked by a Nazi zombie army led by the evil Commander Herzog (Ørjan Gamst) and they have to fight to survive. Will they succeed in their intent?

"Død Snø" is a zombie comedy by Tommy Wirkola with a very similar storyline of "Necrosis" by Jason Robert Stephens and released on the same year (2009). In common, both authors seem to have been inspired by "Evil Dead" and using different evil.

The Norwegian film is funny and gore and I like this combination. The special effects are great and fans of the genre will never be disappointed. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

I have had this movie on Blu Ray for a while and recently revisted. it. Dead Snow is a Norwegian production and is a Nazi zombie horror comedy. Dead Snow definitely delivers the gory goods and gives a nod to the classics that came before, most notably Evil Dead and Dead Alive/Braindead. The film is definitely campy,, but when the horror needs to be amped up, it still plays well. The make up f/x and gore look great. Overall, I had a good time watching this and this Blu Ray is definitely a keeper.

This review comes tardy to the party. I write because I so wanted to love, but in the end, could not. I watched this film dubbed and then with subtitles. It is, of course, far better with subtitles. Frankly, though, in the end, the really grim premise just gets buried in an avalanche of silliness. Too much poo humor, too much goofy slapstick, and not enough context or creepy story-telling just make this the undead weekend ski-trip version of Severed without the brilliant cast. Not unwatchable, lots of clever-clever bits, but ultimately very disappointing and predictable 'Zombedy' entry. I know I swim against the tide, oh boys of fan, but can no longer restrain my 'cri de couer.'

Heading into Dead Snow I was pretty much expecting a Shaun of the Dead type horror flick. Something with more comedy than horror. Which isn't really the case here. It's consistently filled with small or big jokes, but thankfully it's more horror oriented. I suppose I thought this because of the awesome poster displaying a decapitated half-head of a nazi-zombie lying in the snow giving the onlooker a weird look. Not too mention a dude with a blood-drenched chainsaw behind the head. I'm not the biggest fan of hor-coms, but I was really interested in this one because of the whacky premise. So, was it a blizzard of bliss, or a storm of suckage?

The story revolves around a bunch of medical students getting away for some rest and relaxation during the Easter break. Unknown to them, they've set up camp at the absolute wrong place. Back in the day, evil Nazi's used these hills for an escape route or safe haven way back when, and it's said that this is where they supposedly holed up and eventually died. Well, they ain't all that dead. They look it, but they ain't dead. Our medical students eventually meet these blood-thirsty German maniacs and the red stuff starts flowing. A mad dash for survival ensues, and it all ends up being a 'hail' of a lot of fun.

The flick isn't perfect as it suffers some from small horror clichés, like dumb decision making. But at the same time, they handle these clichés in a somewhat refreshing manner. Some cheap scare tactics are used early on to get you on edge, but those are barely used later on, when violence and creative gore take hold.

Dead Snow really surprised me. I wasn't expecting such a fun flick. The characters were all well-fleshed out, the dialogue well-written and funny, the gore aplenty, the horror nods abundant and awesome (Braindead t-shirts?!), and even the score and soundtrack were good. This should become a pretty big hit for horror fans, well I hope so anyways.

The acting, effects, script, lighting, sound in fact everything about this movie is perfectly, soullessly mediocre. It's not frightening. It's not funny. It's not clever. It's not even a bad movie. It's something much more unforgivable. It is a dull movie. Unbelievably, the creators have taken a story involving Teens vs Nazi Zombies, thrown in some sex, sprinkled on Shotguns, chainsaws, blood guts and somehow managed to make it as gripping as Maidstone on a wet Sunday afternoon. There should be a new IMDb review category –reserved for movies that evoke such extreme boredom that you want to kill yourself. So. Ignore the PR company stooges who are posting the 10 star reviews and avoid this hymn to all things bland at all costs. There, now I feel just a little better.

Norwegian Zombie terror film about some Nazis dead coming back to life on snowy lands . A ski vacation turns horrific for a group of medical students, as they find themselves confronted by an unimaginable menace: Nazi zombies. This low-budget terror motion picture deals with a group who run into a pack Nazis coming back to life and terrorizing an unnamed Norwegian area .This clever horror movie deals about an ever-dwindling group of hikers. They drink and party until a mysterious scout arrives. He tells them the dark history of the region; during WWII, a force of Einsatzgruppen led by the dreaded Standartenführer Herzog occupied the location . During three long years the Nazis abused and tortured the local people, and near the end of the war, with Germany's defeat looming, looted all their valuables before beginning to withdraw from the place . The villagers managed to stage an uprising and ambushed the Nazis, killing many. The surviving Nazis, including Herzog, were pursued into the valleys , and it was assumed that they all froze to death . Later on , the hikers are afflicted by stalking, vicious flesh-eating stiffs relieved .

Gory, gruesome , pretty repellent , and ghastly cannibal feast in which the stumbling flesh-eating stiffs are reanimated and can be only destroyed by bullets in the brain , slashing and throat-hacking . Unrelenting shock-feast laced with brief touches of black humor and tongue-in-cheek . Army of Zombies appearance roaming the countryside , booth and some people besieged inside a cottage deliver the goods , enough to be interesting .Main great success from Norway cinema is compelling directed with startling visual content and nice production by Tommy Wirkola ; furthermore special mention to excellent make-up by the magnificent Norwegian craftsmen . This frightening movie is plenty of thrills, chills, body-count executed by the eerie Nazi Zombies and photographed in pallid color with lurid images and phenomenal results . This is a classic excruciatingly Zombie film where the intrigue,tension, suspense appears threatening and lurking on the snowy outdoors , shack , mountains and many other places . In Norway considered the plus ultra of thoroughly disturbing movie is less stomach-churning by nowadays's standards . Død snø (original title) is a genuinely frightening story with correct utilization of images-shock and well photographed on location in Alta, Finnmark, Norway and Målselv, Troms. It contains a creepy and eerie musical score and appropriate cinematography . The director creates a special Zombie thriller that manages to be both scary and skilfully made, deserving its cult status . Rating: Good, this is one more imaginative horror pictures in which the camera stalks in sinister style and packing lots of blood and gore , but also some laughs . It's just one long unrelenting cannibal feast and average budget horror movie that still packs a punch for those who like to be terrorized out their wits. Other films dealing with Zombies Nazis are the following : ¨Shock Waves (1977)¨ by Ken Wiederhorn with Peter Cushing and Brooke Adams ; ¨Grave of the living dead (1983)¨ by Jesus Franco and ¨Horror of war (2006)¨ by John Whitney.

Zombie Nazis, what's not to like? Well, Dead Snow wasn't great, but it was a good time especially in the last half. I liked that it took mostly place in daytime instead of the usual night to hide the clunky makeup and special effects. Speaking of which, the Nazi zombies only looked like zombies from their dessicated faces. The Nazi angle was in fact exploited very little, which is a shame, as the Nazi zombies could have been any other slightly-more-intelligent-than-usual zombies in uniforms. There was acceptable makeup, but I've seen better. There were some good gory moments. Some were copies of other films (or "hommages"), some seemed original (but I haven't seen everything).

I particularly liked the parts with intestines (no, I'm not sick :) because they were clever. I didn't care much for the characters (or future victims) as they were cardboard-thin (basically one trait for each one, if that) and sometimes acted stupidly. One of the last confrontations and what ensued after a bite was brilliantly funny in a dark twisted way. There were other funny moments, but not that much. Scary? Not so much, but some tense moments. It veers more towards comedy than horror, but doesn't go full-blown ridiculous (as in the characters stay serious once the bloodshed begins). You could do worse than rent this.

Rating: 6 out of 10 (good)

The moment you hear even a dollop of the plot from the Norweigian fright flick Dead Snow you are drawn in with unadulterated curiosity. The catch? Nazi Zombies, and while premise goes a long way when marketing a film like this, you need substance to keep the premise supported and it is something that never quite realized in this gory B-movie camp-a-rama.

Sprinkled with moments of hilarity, even genius, Dead Snow perhaps does all that it can with its one-note gimmick. But regardless of intention, I topped out at around the hour mark and than the watch checking began. Really, this film is a very conventional horror film, simply with unconventional antagonists. Where the film truly succeeds is in its uniquely dark humour, because as the Nazi corpses mount at the climax, so does tedium. I am certainly not going to nitpick at the plot and continuity of a film like this, but even under no intentional scrutiny I began to be struck with numerous inconsistencies which only detracted more from the action.

For open minded western audiences the Norweigian leads will be a relief from the aura of convention that masks many of Hollywood's horror efforts. The subtitles alone demand more attention and the crisp mountain summit on which the heroes reside becomes almost a character of its own. The group of friends comprised of either very new or first time Swedish actors all do solid jobs as well and lend to the charm of the click nicely. You have all the conventional players: the cool guy, the jokester, the hot hussy, and the coward but as I said the leads pull it off and the Nazi zombie factor drowns out such clichés nicely enough. The plot itself is really a moot point; the gang are in a remote cabin for a weekend of drinking when the goose-stepping starts and they try to escape. Still with me?

One of the more frustrating aspects of Dead Snow is the egregiously varying strength of the zombies. Some are killed with a single kick to the head while others amble around with an axe in their head. And I'm not going to nit pick on physics, but when seventy year old frozen corpses spurt blood like it's a Tarantino movie you can't help but notice. The final thirty minutes is a single tedious chase sequence and really detracts from the charm built up by the dark humour and bloody fun of the middle segments. This void is made even more depressing as it unflatteringly highlights against the former acts and reeks of what could have been. While a fun enough film to have running in the background on a drunken night with friends, Dead Snow never reaches the level its premise boasts.

Read all my reviews at: simonsaysmovies.blogspot.com

Nazis and zombies have not always been the most successful combination in cinema history. Early 80's shockers Zombie Lake and Oasis of the Zombies proved that this sub-genre needed a lot of work. Moving on to the present day and we have Norwegian film Dead Snow. The question, therefore, has to be have things improved in the past 30 years? Well, marginally at best.

Maybe Dead Snow could more accurately be described as a Teen-Nazi-Zombie flick, seeing as its protagonists are students on a holiday in a remote cabin. You can probably guess from that last line that this film isn't exactly original. It's not remotely scary either. But at times you aren't really sure if it's being played for laughs or not, although I guess that was most probably part of the intention. Horror-comedy is a hard one to pull of, however, and this film essentially shows why. It's effectively neither one nor the other and you are left thinking 'meh'.

The characters are so negligible that you really can't care about them. And occasionally they do things that are highly irritating, i.e. does anyone really think that there is a chance in hell that a hot girl is going to enter a toilet and willingly have sex with a fat man who is in the process of wiping his butt post-dump? Eh, no? Please. Again it may have been intended as a joke? I dunno, maybe it's those long winter nights in Norway that has led to a somewhat strange and misguided sense of humour. Anyhow the Nazi zombies do eventually turn up in numbers but they seem to be computer generated which takes away some of the threat as it's difficult to create genuinely scary monsters with cheap CGI. They are perfectly serviceable for a low budget horror picture to be fair, but I'm just not much of a fan of CGI and prefer proper make up and physical effects.

This is throwaway stuff but it might entertain fans of modern horror films I guess.

I was lucky enough to be invited to see the Norwegian Nazi-zombie-movie, Død snø , in a private screening in Os International Film Festivalen in Norway. This film has the best tag line ever: Ein! Zwei! Die! So my expectations were pretty high on this one!

The director Tommy Wirkola first got famous in Norway with a movie called Kill Buljo: The Movie, which is a Norwegian parody of Kill Bill. He now continues in the same comedy/homage/genre field and very successfully I may add. The movie really is as good as it sounds and on top of that it is actually unique. I really like Tommy Wirkolas ability to combine homage with something new and interesting; not a very easy thing to do folks!

Død snø is basically a teenager-slasher-horror-comedy with Nazi-zombies. The storyline is pretty basic; it's about these teenagers that go up to a cabin in the mountains in the middle of winter and get ambushed by a punch of zombies. Yeah, you know the drill… But this one really delivers, and all the clichés are used to benefit the film. You can see a lot of influences from past genre movies and it is filled with homage towards them. Everyone who likes these kinds of films will have a blast at the movie theater; I laughed my ass off!

So goo see this film!!! I give it 5 stars!

Come on! It was fun! Zombified Nazi soldiers from the war are attacking a bunch of students. And the students fight back. A lot of references to Evil Dead here, a lot of fun, stupendous gore, with all the guts and brains and blood you would ever want.

At times the humour in the film actually hurt the viewing, since it was obviously artificial, so the greatest flaw of the movie, according to yours truly, is that it was not consistent, ever shifting from parody to the real thing. But eve so, it was tons of fun.

Although I have to admit, the funniest part of the movie is when the Nazi zombie officer appears with a spotless officer hat. I can only imagine the poor guy, eternally cleaning his military attire.

I've read comments on this board about how much this movie will blow your mind. Don't believe them. They are truly lying. This movie disappoints in pretty much every aspect: the script, the acting, the humor, the horror, the characters... anyway, the (non-existent) story overall. I'm a zombie fan and this was below average, even if it is supposed to be a b-movie.

Maybe if I hadn't read the comments before I watched the movie, I wouldn't be so disappointed. I would just think it's another forgettable hit-and-miss at the zombie genre.

If you want a zombie comedy, go watch Evil Dead or Shaun of the Dead.

4 out of 10 because the FX were good and because if you don't buy the hype, it's not THAT bad. It's just bad.

There is one major problem, horror comedies have these days: Most of the times, when the gore/horror kicks in, the humor goes/flies out the window. Not with this movie though. It stays right on track and achieves to stay funny and scary at the same time (maybe "gory" would be a more appropriate word).

While there isn't much of a plot (a few people somewhere have to fend of something evil), there is a fun ride hidden in this movie. Even the illogical attitude shown and some script failures don't really mess up a genuinely funny movie. And yes, while it might be considered more of horror movie (lots of blood), this is mostly a fun watch. Especially for those who think "Braindead" is a great movie ... References to other horror comedies included (T-Shirt).