SPOILER WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Synopsis: A group of Norwegian med students goes to a very remote cabin in the snow for... well, what seems like a pretty awful vacation, I mean like freezing freezing cold, no TV, and one snowmobile. And no skis even! Anyway, they seem happy about it. And then a crazy old man shows up at their door to give them a very cryptic warning. They should've listened, because after that, the Nazi Zombies come for their gold. Intestines ensue.
Scariness Type: Gore gore gore gore gore. And intestines.
Rating: 3/5 Intestines.
Body Count: 9 people, 1 bird, and 35 or so zombies.
Fun Fact: During the movie, I honestly wondered why it wasn't called "Red Snow", which would've been way better. Now I checked IMDB and I find that in fact it was originally called that. No indication as to why they changed it.
Best Moment: It's always fun, and completely unscary, when the heroes have finally had enough of running away from the scary monsters and find a chainsaw and start wailing away.
Worst Moment: Much more upsetting than zombies crushing skulls was when somebody got pulled into the pit under the outhouse. So much worse. Oh, you know what else was bad and really out of place? When one of the students nearly murders another one with a pillow over her face and her hands trapped, as some sort of perverse joke. And that guy wasn't even the "super evil teen" role we have seen in other movies. What on earth was that? You don't partially murder people and then laugh it off!
A Suspension Bridge Too Far: Suspending yourself from a
human intestine (as it spools out of a body) is too far. I don't think this movie knows how intestines work. They were present in almost every fight in the movie, doing all kinds of awful things, very few of which were anything close to related to actual intestines. Some strange intestinal obsession in this one for sure. Maybe the writer had Crohn's disease and thus had a real fear of issues related to them. Come to think of it, there were even a bunch of outhouse-related scenes. I could definitely see the writer having bowel fears. Now that's just weird.
Horror Tropes: "It was just a dream", a scene that seems normal until the person wakes up and it didn't happen. I'm tired of that, give me blood drips any day. Also a rather specific element stolen straight from Edgar Wright: the quick-cut "gearing up" scenes, where straps are tightened, hats and gloves are thrown on, etc. They stole the style of these
exactly from Shaun Of The Dead and other Edgar Wright joints. Many movies have done these things, but Edgar Wright has a specific style to them, which was clearly duplicated here, and yet is somehow lesser.
My Take: This was almost a good experience. It had the hipness factor of Nazi Zombies and the associated bits of humor (although not as much as I would've expected or wanted), and the hipness factor of college kids and the associated bits of humor (although not as much I would've expected or wanted - this was not written by the Norwegian Kevin Smith), and the fun zombie war with chainsaws and sledgehammers. But it just didn't quite hit it hard enough. There was a little too much darkness, kind of an attempt to be actually scary, but that was wasted in a goofy zombie movie, they should've just gone all out with the fun and humor.
The Lesson: Always check your pockets thoroughly when running from zombies - you never know if you may still have a piece of nazi gold on you.
