Horror House

Let me begin with saying that this is a particularly hard review because the movie originates from Norway and is subtitled in English. I'm not sure how much Norwegian you may know but I was glued to the lower portion of the screen during the dialogue portions of the film. With that being said, I am going to review this film with more of a stream-of-consciousness style.

Time elapsed since finishing the movie...45 minutes...

The film opens with a young woman running by moonlight through snow covered mountains. Surprise! She is trapped and eaten. My take, I like it. In the first minute of the movie you know there will be gore and they are making a legitimate effort to scare you.

Seven of the recently deceased's (Sara) friends are going up to a cabin which is in an incredibly remote area of the mountains for a week of winter fun. They are all medical students having their first break from their studies in quite some time and just want to unwind. Everything is going swimmingly (in alcohol) until one of the girls leaves the cabin to use the adjacent outhouse. Something startles her in the woods and turns out to be a mysterious hiker who asks to have some coffee. The seven let the man into the cabin and he tells them a terrible tale of Nazi brutality during the Second World War directed towards the locals of the area. The Nazi's beat and tortured the locals and when they finally realized that the Russians would win, they robbed and murdered any local who resisted. The people staged an uprising and pushed the Nazi's into the mountains where they presumably became lost and froze to death. - At this point, I figured it was a platoon of Nazi soldiers. - The hiker then embarks into the wilderness but not before giving a warning to the seven students to mind their P's and Q's and respect the land they camped on. The hiker is soon brutally eaten by zombies.

The next morning, after having a dream about her death, Sara's boyfriend Vegard takes the snowmobile to go look for her as she was supposed to ski to the cabin and meet them but had (as we already knew from the beginning) not arrived. He finds the body of the hiker and falls into a cave while hiking up a mountain. The others continue to party and find a mysterious box with all sorts of silver, gold, and other valuables from the early 1940's. One of the girls leaves the cabin to use the outhouse and is murdered. They finally realize that something isn't quite right when just her head shows up in the window. The remaining five board up the place and arm themselves with the sole shotgun that was stowed in the cabin. What happens next is quite possibly one of the most brutal movie kills I have ever seen. The zombies try to infiltrate the cabin by breaking windows and one grab's one of the students by the head and tries to pull him out. His friends immediately try to pull him back which only enrages the zombie who digs into the guy's face and rips his skull clean apart showering his friends with brain matter.

Meanwhile, Vegard comes to in the cave he fell into and explores it a little only to find a cache of historic weapons, Nazi memorabilia, and of course his girlfriend's severed head. He is promptly attacked by zombies.

The remaining four students decide to split up to get back to the cars in order to get help. The two girls (Hanna and Liv) make a mad dash as the two guys (Martin and Roy) stay as bait for the zombies. Liv is attacked and comes to as two zombies disembowel her but she goes out in style by taking them out with a grenade taken from the belt of one of the zombies. Hanna is also attacked but survives.

Martin and Roy go to work taking out countless zombies with a chainsaw, sickle, and hammers obtained from the shed behind the cabin. Vegard returns with a MG 34 machine gun mounted on his snowmobile to help out the two men. - Remember how I thought the hiker was talking about a platoon of Nazi's? No, no, no...a battalion of zombies now rise from the snow - Vegard is then killed and Martin accidentally kills his girlfriend Hanna with a hatchet to the neck. Martin is then bitten and forced to cut his own arm off with a chainsaw to avoid becoming a zombie. Roy is hit in the head with a hammer by the HZIC (head zombie in charge) and gets disemboweled by a tree branch he is caught on after being disoriented from the blow.

Martin realizes that the zombies are after the box full of valuables and gives it to the HZIC. He then makes his way back to the car and struggles to get in and start it as he now only has one arm. During this struggle, a gold coin falls from his pocket onto the floor of the car. Oops...

Overall this was a pretty good horror movie. The factors that it was in another language and that I didn't know any of the character's names until they were killed off were downfalls. However, I'm a sucker for zombie movies and history, which this included both and the plot was decently original with some funny parts.

In short, Dead Snow is gory, engaging, and foreign. I give it...3 screams out of 5.