Against my better judgment I went with some friends and saw the Norwegian made “nazi-zombie” movie Død Snø (Dead Snow).

The movie is made by talentless writer/director Tommy Wirkola, who just 2 years ago embarrassed the country with a horrible Kill Bill parody (“Kill Buljo”). By looking at the trailer for Død Snø, it actually doesn’t seem so bad, and if the movie was as good as the trailer I would not be bitching and complaining right now.. But the movie itself fails at so many things it’s almost embarrassing.

Story – FAIL
Now I would be the first to acknowledge that a movie with nazi zombies does not need much of a plot. However there at least have to be SOMETHING, even if the plot is so simple as “zombies around, locked up in shopping mall / mountain cabin, try to escape” there still have to be events that pushes the story forward towards something. Watching Død Snø feels like going nowhere really slow, nothing really happens and there is nothing leading up to anything, no sense of progression, no nothing.

Characters – FAIL
The only properly developed character is killed early in the movie. The rest of the characters are uninteresting and with NO back story. The dialogs throughout the movie are lame and if you are going to have someone talk with the ugliest Norwegian dialect ever conceived (Stavanger) for the love of gods, ADD SUBTITLES!

Genre – 3x FAIL
The movie tries at three genres and misses all of them by a furlong.
Horror/zombie, the movie is not scary at all, it has no atmosphere what so ever and there is none of that tight, claustrophobic eerie zombie feeling. Just a few attempts on sudden/cheap scares which FAIL.
Comedy, the only good thing this movie has to show for are a couple of OK jokes. but sadly most of the movie is about as funny as watching Adam Sandler making dinner.
Splatter, this movie does not qualify as a splatter, there are only a few splatter scenes, most of which are pretty dull and unoriginal. Both the quality and quantity of the effects does not stand up well to other splatters.

Quality – FAIL
The sound sucks donkey balls.
The music sucks elephant balls.
The effects are mediocre at their best.
The zombie makeup is almost passable.
60% of the movie is shot in the dark.. by someone who can’t shoot in the dark.

Conclusion
This half ass movie reaches movies like Bad Taste, Braindead, Shaun of the dead, *real zombie movies* up to their ankles. I would rather have watched Braindead once again. No sound, no color, Portuguese subtitles, as a poor VHS rip on a broken LCD monitor, and with one eye shut.. It would still be roughly 3 times better than Død Snø:

“Artist illustration”

rating: 2.5 / 10