CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 6/19/09

Coming in From the Cold

By peter clines

Dead Snow (Dod Sno)

Screenplay by Stig Frode Henriksen (also acted) and Tommy Wirkola (also directed)

When a handful of pre-med students head up to the mountains for a long weekend of fun, snow, and sex, their biggest worries are running out of beer and using the frigid outhouse. Certainly none of them expect to deal with a few platoons of undead Nazi soldiers who've survived for half a century in the frozen wastes. At its core, there isn't a lot to Dead Snow that we haven't seen before. In fact, the film offers a few dozen homages to genre favorites like Evil Dead II, Halloween, and even Raiders of the Lost Ark. What makes it stand out is screenwriters Henriksen and Wirkola embracing the inherent comedy in horror that so many recent torture-porn flicks have forgotten about. The tone is set 10 minutes in, with the characters listing off scary movies where dumb college students wander out into the woods—while these same characters are wandering out into the woods. When the surprisingly intelligent and motivated undead show up, our heroes fight back with a degree of success, but they're as much a threat to each other as the zombies. This ongoing juxtaposition makes the scares all the stronger and the film more than just another gut-wrenching experience. Some of the translated subtitles are a bit clumsy, and it'll never win an Oscar—not even for best foreign film—but it'll still be one of the most entertaining horror movies you've seen in a while.

Dead Snow
IFC Films
Not rated; 90 min.

Peter Clines grew up in the Stephen King fallout zone of Maine and made his first writing sale at age 17 to a local newspaper. He currently lives somewhere in southern California, and can often be found ranting on his cleverly named blog, Writer on Writing. His first novel, Ex-Heroes, will be released in fall 2009.



Dead Snow courtesy IFC Films

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