Dead Snow (2009)
★★½ — Dead Snow (2009)
Norway is not the most obvious home for a splatter comedy, but then again, "Nazi zombies in a snowbound mountain range" is not the most obvious premise for a film. Dead Snow, released in 2009 and directed by Tommy Wirkola, arrived on the festival circuit via Sundance before finding its audience on the horror-comedy shelf that had been propped open by the likes of Shaun of the Dead a few years earlier. The set-up is blunt and deliberate: a group of eight medical students head to a remote Norwegian cabin for a ski holiday and find themselves hunted by the undead remnants of a Nazi battalion that terrorised the local population during the Second World War. The film takes its tagline, "Eins, Zwei, Die!", as a kind of mission statement. It knows precisely what it is and is not shy about advertising the fact.
Wirkola was a relatively young director at the time, and Dead Snow represented his first significant international exposure, produced through Norwegian companies Zwart Arbeid, Euforia Film and FilmCamp. The film sits comfortably within a tradition of knowingly trashy horror that wears its influences on its blood-soaked sleeve, nodding to everything from The Evil Dead onwards. It runs to a tight 88 minutes, which in theory should keep things moving. The principal cast, including Vegar Hoel, Charlotte Frogner, Stig Frode Henriksen, Lasse Valdal and Evy Kasseth Røsten, are all Norwegian, and the film was shot on location in the mountains around Øvre Dividal, which gives it a genuinely bleak and isolated look. For all its silliness, the setting has real atmosphere. Snow and horror have always been a productive combination, and Wirkola leans into the landscape as much as the gore. If you are curious about what else Norwegian cinema has to offer beyond the horror aisle, the site has reviews of The Worst Person in the World (2021) and No Other Land (2024), both also from Norway, though operating in rather different registers. For other horror films covered here, there is also a look at Castle Freak (2020), another horror entry that tested how far genre enthusiasm can carry a film with a rickety premise.
Dead Snow (2009) serves up a premise that sounds like a pub dare gone right: Nazi zombies in the Norwegian wilderness. And for a while, it works. The slow-burn setup in a snowbound cabin generates decent atmosphere, the gore effects are suitably squelchy, and there's a certain novelty in watching undead SS officers shuffle through blizzards. The Norwegian cast commits gamely to the material, and the third act delivers the promised splatter with reasonable energy. But beyond the gimmick, there's little substance. The characters are thinly sketched horror fodder, the pacing drags through long stretches of exposition and filler, and the humour rarely rises above juvenile slapstick. What might have been a sharp, subversive horror-comedy settles for competent but forgettable genre fare. Even within the zombie canon (and certainly within the niche of Nazi zombie films) it's neither the goriest, the funniest, nor the most inventive. A functional, occasionally entertaining B-movie that earns a shrug rather than a shudder. It delivers exactly what the premise promises, nothing more.
That "functional but forgettable" verdict is one I keep coming back to with films like this. There is a version of Dead Snow that genuinely earns its cult status, one that either commits harder to the horror or sharpens the comedy into something with a bit of wit behind it. As it stands, I found myself admiring the location work and the practical effects in isolated moments, then checking how many minutes were left during the stretches in between. Wirkola clearly had the genre literacy to build something more pointed, which makes the missed opportunity mildly frustrating rather than entirely forgivable. Worth a watch on a quiet Friday night if the premise appeals, but do not go in expecting more than the poster promises. Sometimes a shrug is all a film earns, and this one earns it honestly.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2009 | Watched: 2026-03-30
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Dead Snow (2009) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Norway: The Family (2017) · No Other Land (2024) · The Worst Person in the World (2021) · One Love (2003)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
