What Could Be Worse than Nazi Zombies?

I’ve made another change in my Monster Movies in October schedule. I swapped out The Bloodstained Shadow for the 2009 Norwegian film Dead Snow (Død Snø) about Nazi Zombies.  Dead Snow is a movie that I wanted to like.  Seriously.  Nazi Zombies!

It seemed like a great concept.  And I really wanted to like this movie, but the movie knows that it is cliché and is never able to rise above the level of cliché.

How many movies start with a group of friends on a trip to a cabin?

There are a few clever moments in Dead Snow but never gets around to adding anything new to the zombie genre.  It just quotes all the old zombie favorites but with amplified blood and gore.  But the great zombie movies aren’t really about the zombies.  The great zombie movies are about the human characters.  Dead Snow is just about the zombies… the zombies and lots of gore.

And it could have been so much more.  Given that Zombies (usually) are mindless flesh eating creatures a film about Nazi zombies could have explored the nature of evil and the choices that humans make.  It could have been about guilt and shame.  It could have been, but it wasn't. And I was disappointed.  I wanted something more than a lot of blood.


Of course Nazi Zombies aren't really new. There was the 1977 movie Shock Waves that featured Nazi zombies and Peter Cushing.