Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead (2014) [Blu-ray]
Action | Comedy | Horror

Martin (Vegar Hoel) hasn't had the best vacation. He accidentally killed his girlfriend with an axe. He cut his own arm off with a chainsaw. And his friends still got devoured by a battalion of Nazi Zombies. This morning, he woke up in a hospital bed with a new arm - but it's a super-powered Zombie arm that wants to kill him, and anyone else it can reach. Martin's pissed. And with the help of his new Zombie Squad pals (Martin Starr, Jocelyn DeBoer, Ingrid Haas), he's gonna deliver some payback to Colonel Herzog (Orjan Gamst) and his precious Nazi gold - by raising an undead army of his own.

Storyline: If the worst day of your life consisted of accidentally killing your girlfriend with an axe, chain-sawing your own arm off, and watching in horror as your closest friends were devoured by a zombified Nazi battalion, you'd have to assume that things couldn't get much worse. In Martin's case, that was only the beginning. Written by Production

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 9, 2014 -- We're already well into film awards season, with films like Boyhood starting to steamroll their way through various fêtes on toward the grand prize, that little golden man known as Oscar. While most major awards ceremonies tend to honor by now well worn categories like Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director, I'd like to propose a new category for some enterprising entrepreneur who wants to build a celebration into (hopefully) a nationally televised event: Best Tag Line. And for the 2014 award, I think we can just cut to the chase and give the trophy to Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead for its wonderfully punny ad copy which states "the sequel you did Nazi coming." As my colleague Casey Broadwater mentioned in his review of Dead Snow, Nazi zombies are nothing new, having been a cinematic staple of sorts for several decades now. I frankly never caught the first Dead Snow, but I've had my fair share of Nazi zombie movies to review (War of the Dead, anyone?), a perhaps telling commentary on just how many of this subgenre are around, kind of like a certain horde of walking dead. Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead doesn't try to radically reinvent anything, simply picking up from where the first film evidently left off and continuing the misadventures of hero Martin (Vegar Hoel), the sole human survivor (albeit missing one arm) of a rampaging Nazi zombie attack in the wilds of Norway.

Even for those who, like me, never saw the original Dead Snow, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead begins with a brief recap offering the greatest hits (or, considering the amount of vivisection on display, greatest splits) of the first film, as Norman's voiceover gives us a very quick but more or less complete précis of what has already gone down. Those vicious Nazis had been on the hunt for some hidden gold, which Norman and his hapless friends had had the misfortune of stumbling across. Norman had been bitten by a zombie, but knew enough to simply saw off the appendage with the bite to prevent the spread of incipient zombieism, hence his missing right arm. The sequel begins with a mad action sequence which capably defines the film's manic comedy style, as Norman tries to get the hell out of the Nazi infestation with a bunch of stormtroopers attached to his car. That situation delivers another shorn arm right into Norman's car, an amputation that presents a wealth of comic opportunities further down Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead's rather bloody road.

In a complete state of panic, Martin ends up crashing the car, and wakes up happily ensconced in a hospital where a "helpful" doctor has "reattached" what he thought was Martin's arm, but which in fact is that Nazi appendage from the car. That's the least of Martin's problems (at least for a little while, anyway), as the concerned local constabulary has come to the conclusion that Martin is a mad serial killer who has offed all of his friends (and his girlfriend, to boot). When Martin starts ranting about Nazi zombies, the cops are only more convinced about that "mad" part.

Martin is horrified of course to discover he now has a formerly Nazi arm sewn onto his body, and he's even more horrified when the arm tries to take things into its own hand (so to speak), attacking the doctors and cops. That gets Martin heavily sedated and tied down to his bed, where he experiences a vision that the Nazi, under the leadership of Herzog (Ørjan Gamst), are on the rampage, coming down from their mountain lair. A curious American kid who has wandered (unwisely) into Martin's hospital room frees him from his shackles while also alerting Martin to the fact that there's an American Zombie Squad very interested in Martin's odd looking arm (which the kid has texted a picture of to the group with his phone). That arm wreaks a bit more havoc, including with the kid (in one of the film's more spectacularly gross but undeniably hilarious moments), but at least Martin is finally free to take on the Nazis.

Martin has ended up with the little boy's phone and is quickly in contact with the Zombie Squad, a group which reassures him about their "professionalism" and that they'll be coming as soon as possible to help, but that Martin needs to find out exactly what the Nazis are after. A quick reveal shows us that (of course) the Zombie Squad is simply a trio of poseurs who have absolutely no clue about anything, other than that they musn't let their parents know what they're up to. Nonetheless, Martin is heartened and sets out to discover why the Nazis are continuing to rampage.

The bulk of the film actually ends up taking place in and around a huge war museum which has a significant portion devoted to Nazi memorabilia, a collection which provides an important clue as to who exactly Herzog was (is?) and why he seems so relentlessly preoccupied with this little corner of Norway. In the meantime, Norman has to deal with a hipster museum attendant (Stig Frode Henriksen, who also co- wrote the film) who becomes increasingly frantic once the zombies show up, as well as the Zombie Squad, who do indeed make it to Norway to help fight the good fight.

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead doesn't have any outsized ambitions, but what it does have is a very dark but effective sense of humor. There are a number of laugh out loud kill scenes scattered throughout the film, with totally over the top, gross out splatter effects and everything from poor, paralyzed people getting trampled by Nazis to a hapless woman getting pulverized by a marauding Nazi tank. The verbal interplay is decidedly more mundane, but does contain a few nice bon mots along the way (the hipster museum attendant begs for mercy when grabbed by Norman's monster Nazi arm, exclaiming, "I have two cats!")

This is a patently silly film that knows it's ridiculous, unlike a number of more serious minded, supposedly high-falutin' horror fare (including several zombie films). Performances are surprisingly spry and also unexpectedly good is the film's slate of special effects, some CGI and some practical. This film apparently tanked at the box office, but it's a lot of fun in its own weird little way and should keep armchair Nazi zombie hunters warm throughout the winter season.

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead is just flat out goofy fun, at least most of the time. There's little doubt the film is stuffed to the gills with stereotypical characters, but the screenplay is surprisingly witty for such a resolutely silly premise, and my hunch is most people will find at least a couple of laugh out loud moments sprinkled throughout the general mayhem. Technical merits are very strong, and in what may indeed be the latest sign of the coming zombie apocalypse, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead comes Recommended.

[CSW] -3.6- This movie picks up immediately from where the last one left off. This is a darkly comic zombie horror that is loads of fun. The first movie was a surprise, and this one is a surprise as well. If you saw the first one then the novelty of the plot is not as engaging as when you aren't expecting it, but they made up for it with a new twist. I rated this one a little lower than the first one only because The Walking Dead had numbed me a little to the special effects, although this one has a lot more blood/spatter. It is still a good movie although I think of it as a don't-miss but once-is-enough horror/comedy/action film for all the horror/comedy/action fans.
[V4.0-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box.


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