DEAD SNOW revew

“DEAD SNOW” ALIVE WITH LAUGHS

Walking out of the Loft Cinema after watching “Dead Snow,” a Norwegian film starring uniformed Nazi zombies, the big question will be “Why didn’t somebody think of this sooner?”

Who in the fandom of horror movie satire could resist Nazi zombies? Picture ghoulish white faces framed in those helmets made famous by Darth Vader and Hitler’s armies; horrible figures that only make guttural noises and live to kill.

What’s not to like? And in all these movies, the lower the budget the better. Bottom-feeding nightmares always have the greatest impact.

Co-writer and director Tommy Wirkola flaunts his lack of budget like a badge of honor. The torn-off arms and other body parts are so laughably fake they barely qualify as Cheez-Whiz.

Velveeta body parts would be higher on the food chain which, in the case of these angry storm troopers, is literally true. They will eat anything.

Wirkola’s other stroke of genius is to give the incredibly handsome and stunningly beautiful humans – tasty 20-sometings with terrific bodies – totally obnoxious personalities. They may look lovely on the outside, but all four men and three women are arrogant medical students with insufferable attitudes.

When these children of privilege sit around the fireplace in an isolated vacation cabin polishing their preppy social skills so avidly, you can’t wait for the serious chomping to begin.

Trust me on this, “Dead Snow” is one movie where you will be cheering for the zombies to win.

Since tradition calls for some description of the plot, this one opens with these seven elitists gathering at the exclusive snow-bound cabin above the Arctic Circle. Cell phone service is out of the question. So is electricity and indoor plumbing, though there is great beauty in the rustic cabin’s setting.

A cranky old outdoorsman stops by to tell the obnoxious vacationers about the 300 German soldiers who were tricked and then massacred by 3,000 Norwegian villagers toward the end of World War II.

Then while these well-groomed victims-to-be do some frolicking in the snow and fooling around in the outhouse, we start making mental lists of which one deserves to be torn limb from limb first.

Wirkola and co-writer Stig Frode Henricksen do include some homage to the horror movie oeuvre, but that’s not really the point. This isn’t an insider’s game of who can spot the most obscure references to past films of genuine depravity.

“Dead Snow” would rather wonder if zombie intestines would make a good substitute for mountain climber’s rope. Or imagine that if you could pull a person’s skull apart with your bare hands, the brain would pop right out.

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