Fantasia 2009: Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow

Up-and-coming Norwegian writer/director Tommy Wirkola (Kill Buljo) takes viewers on a tour of the beautiful snowy mountains of Oksfjord, Norway in his second feature film, Dead Snow.  The thing is, Wirkola has also decided that the time is ripe for a revival of a horror subgenre many people thought would never re-surface: the Nazi zombie film (remember Shock Waves, with Peter Cushing and John Carradine?).  By the end of this 90-minute splatter comedy, the beautiful white snow of the Norwegian Alps will be painted blood red.

After a frenetic shaky-cam opening sequence excellently set to the tune of Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” in which we see a young woman running from someone – or something – in the mountains, we are introduced to a group of 6 med-school students heading to an isolated cabin for their Easter break.  Before long, a mysterious stranger arrives to explain that during World War II Oksfjord served as a defensive stronghold for the Nazis but that the inhabitants revolted against them and forced them up into the mountains, and it’s rumored that they are still hunting for the gold and silver they looted from the locals.  With this revelation we are set for some of the best comedic carnage to come along in quite some time.

There’s nothing really new on offer here, but Wirkola seems to know this and instead winks at his audience as if he knows we’re in on the joke.  What’s interesting, though, is that he’s melded the conventions of the slasher genre (promiscuity equals death, seemingly insane local oldtimer offers history as a warning, all-knowing horror movie afficianado makes the mistakes he’s supposed to know better about, etc.) onto a zombie movie.  Not sheer brilliance, granted, but it is an interesting concept.  The acting seems to improve as the film goes on, and Stig Frode Henriksen (who also co-wrote) as Roy has a face and charm that you just want to laugh at incessantly.  The comedy is solid, and the gore gags and makeup effects are phenomenal, with enough spraying blood, severed body parts, and intestines unfurling out of gaping stomach wounds to sate even the most bloodthirsty gorehounds.

Considering that Tommy Wirkola’s first feature was a direct parody of Kill Bill and that he has also directed a short named Remake, it’s pretty obvious that viewers shouldn’t expect this one to re-invent the wheel.  And that’s okay, because as far as Nazi zombie films go, Dead Snow is a bloody good time!