Dead Snow Movie Review by Roger Ebert：Attack of the bloodthirsty Nazi zombie ski patrol

They’ve finally assembled a horror film entirely from cliches. They even know they’re doing it. As a carload of young medical students drives to a secluded cabin in a snowy Norwegian forest, they find their cell phones don’t work. That’s just like "Friday the 13th," one says, but is corrected: "They didn’t have cell phones then."

Yes, they are in a cabin so far in the woods, they have to leave their car behind and follow snowmobile tracks, all except for Sara, who decides to trek overland. We suspect Sara will not be getting a lot of dialogue in this movie. The others settle in and break out the beer, but are disturbed by a scary, whiskery old-timer who warns them of a vicious Nazi unit that lurked in these mountains during the war "and probably froze to death." Not with 75 minutes left in the movie, they didn’t.

But how would the Nazis survive until the present day? Well of course they are zombies, which the kids recognize when their cabin is attacked by shambling decaying men in Nazi uniforms. This crisis throws the threatened students into overdrive, clicking off as many items from Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary as they possibly can.

I will not list all of them, because to do so would summarize the plot. I was especially happy to hear "let’s split up," and later, after two girls wander off alone, to hear them discuss splitting up themselves. One bitter student says, "We should have gone to the beach like I said." I do not recall if he is the same one who sets his backpack on fire to cauterize his wound after amputating his own arm with the obligatory chain saw.

One thing about the director, Tommy Wirkola. He’s thrifty. Once his actors have their faces completely spattered with blood, he lets it stay on for hours. Your average medical students, when they get splattered with blood, they clean it off. It’s part of their training. Especially with zombie blood.

One girl, wearing bright red, tries to hide from the Nazi zombies by climbing a tree. Remember that in winter, there are no leaves. Yet the zombies, who are not the swiftest corpses in the mortuary, miss spotting her red ski jacket until she disturbs the eggs in a crow’s nest, the crow screeches at her and the Nazis hear her shushing it. In my opinion, shushing a crow is a fool’s errand.

But practical details should not concern us. Particularly not after one of the guys disembowels a Nazi and then another Nazi grabs him, and they both topple off a high cliff but the guy holds on by grabbing the dead Nazi’s large intestine, which is many yards long. If you have a large intestine that will support the weight of two men, you can forget about the colonoscopy. Apparently zombies evolve such intestines, since when a disem- boweled human is seen earlier in the film, he is clearly grasping greasy frankfurter links.

"Dead Snow," as you may have gathered, is a comedy, but played absolutely seriously by sincere, earnest young actors. At no point, for example, do they notice that the snow is dead. The movie is pretty funny. One of the guys discovers his cell phone is working, and calls 911. "We’ve been attacked by what look like Germans from the Second World War!" he shouts. "And we set our cabin on fire by accident!" He removes his phone from his ear and stares at it vengefully: "The bitch hung upon on me!"

The film comes to us from Norway, which no doubt explains the snow. Nazi ski patrols did once haunt these slopes. It is the second feature by the director-writer team of Tommy Wirkola and Stig Frode Henriksen. Their first film was a satire of Tarantino’s "Kill Bill" named "Kill Buljo: The Movie" ("In Kautokeino, no one can hear you scream.") If "Mystery Science Theater 3000" had never existed, "Dead Snow" would have had to invent it.

Note: The movie opens in theaters today and also is available on cable via IFC’s video on demand option.

Snow Falling on Bleeders

The zombie genre refuses to die. Recent films like "Shaun of the Dead" have given zombies new comedic life. Even Jane Austen has had a zombie makeover with the publication of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". The latest contribution comes from Norway, with Tommy Wirkola's "Dead Snow (Død snø)" giving a double-dose of undead: Nazi zombies. In its opening scene, a woman is chased by zombies through a snowy Norwegian wood, accompanied by Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy". After this promising start, the film decomposes into something more lifeless.

A group of friends sets out to their cabin in the woods for Easter vacation (begging the question: was Jesus the first zombie?). These soon-to-be unhappy campers will suffer the familiar misfortunes that occur whenever a group of young, attractive people party in a remote setting. The most obvious influences are playfully referenced, including "Evil Dead" and "Friday the 13th."

A wise old hiker, "The Wanderer", mysteriously passes through and tells the kids of the area's history of wartime atrocities at the hands of the Germans. A civilian uprising eventually drove the soldiers into the mountains, where they froze to death. What happened next is left unclear, though the friends are warned about an "evil presence". www.130q.com

It's hard not to love a zombie in a uniform, but whatever orders they're following seem arbitrary. Do zombies only come out at night? At first the answer seems to be yes, then no. Can zombies use weapons? They still have guns and knives from the war, but they only use knives. These zombies also use their fists as often as they use their teeth, with some scenes resembling a Western-style brawl. What do the zombies want? A subplot of stolen treasure, reminiscent of John Carpenter's "The Fog", only makes things more...foggy.

For fans of graphic violence and creative killings, "Dead Snow" doesn't disappoint. The battalion of zombies and their leader, Colonel Herzog, provide gore galore. The horror often goes hand-in-hand with humor. One character, having been bitten and afraid of becoming a zombie, is reassured that they wouldn't want to recruit him - since he is part Jewish. Why zombies can be funny is best left to Freud, and why Nazi zombies can be funny is best left to Mel Brooks (who might have called this film "Zombies on Ice"). 

"Dead Snow" recaptures some of its whimsical mayhem when the remaining characters make their last stand with chainsaws and hammers, and zombies pop out of the snow like gangrene gophers. Despite these inspired bits, much of the film is aimless shambling, as if in search of its own brain. Still, "Dead Snow" is sure to be the best Nazi zombie film of the year.