3 out of 5

Director: Tommy Wirkola

Average fun, gets points for momentum. Definitely in the vein of Shaun of the Dead comes ‘Dead Snow’, a Norwegian horror comedy that scores on the grand idea of Nazi zombies and stumbles through a plot to get us to some fun horror payoff. Some couples and singles go camping in a Winter cabin, get a visit from a cranky old man who warns them of bad things in the mountains, then run afoul of angry Nazi zombies. The eye-rolling bit here comes in the sort of stuttering characterization and attempt to define characters, as the overt attempts to create “clever” banter devolves into stupid jokes that don’t seem to match the kind of characters they were going for, and the couple/couple/singles formula doesn’t add much to the plot except to allow for some weird sex and obvious first choices for kills. But it passes quick enough, and they don’t try to get too heavy with telling us hows and whys before tossing us into the silly lore of Nazi zombies. Then a couple fun horror references and some pretty awesome zombie costumes leads to a mostly entertaining last portion of the film. But the same uneven beats in the dialogue pop up in shooting style here, perhaps a foreign mentality applied to what wants to be an American film. (And yes, the director has now been tapped for an English movie…) Anyhow, it’s good fun with some good gore and use of budget, and though predictable it’s got good mojo that pushes it above the horror-clutter in the world.