Dead Snow (Dod Sno)

For the first post I thought I'd do a piece on Dead Snow, the Norwegian slapstick horror.

I live in Montreal and each years there's a independent film festival called Fantasia that occupies our summer and usually it's a great place to see rare flicks. Though, for the past couple of years I've had less and less ambition to go because of the audience and the crappy technical ''support'' they have.

And, to add to this, most of the movies they show are either already available for imports or will be available on dvd 2 weeks later. So, instead of ruining my experience for the zombie flick Dead Snow, I got my hands on it and watched it comfortable in my living room.

It's simple, med students go into the snowy mountains to celebrate with their buddies and in the process, awake the wrath of Zombie Nazies. The story is pretty straight forward indeed but the execution is more what's important about this flick. The creators didn't want to reinvent the wheel and it shows, references to Dead Alive (AKA Braindead) and Evil Dead are ''in your face'' not only in the matter of context but also how they filmed the movie.

The shed is there, the humor is there and the ''cheap'' special effects are there for a quick laugh.

And then, they splatter scenes with gore that you would think Tom Savini was involved. Also interesting is the obvious contrast of the snow and the blood, I thought it added to the shock effect.

The director, Tommy Wirkola, is basically an unknown...having only made Kill Buljo (A Norwegian parody of Kill Bill) abut with this release, I'm sure we'll hear him again soon enough.

It's been a good time for small time horror directors in the past couple of years, I'm referring to people like Neil Marshall (Doomsday, Dog Soldiers) and Zach Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) who have gained popularity by starting low budget.

Now, if only they could stop using those directors to make crappy remakes of Italian or Spanish movies.