Dead Snow (2009)

Episode 108, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  Today, we are continuing our December themed horror films and, you know, we try to get holiday movies during this time of year. Although, as we always say, pickings get pretty slim the more we do this podcast. So we have to we have to stretch a little bit. If we’re gonna keep up this this theme, we have to go for things that are maybe just sort of set around wintertime, or even in this case, just when there’s snow on the ground. So this movie, I think, technically, because one character mentions it at one point is takes place during Easter. But you would never know, because, all you see is snow and people out having a good time on vacation. So we’re gonna pretend that this is December, and, Santa Claus would be coming over the mountain, anytime now at this resort, where these characters are, and the film is called Dead Snow. It has the word snow in the title, so it’s it’s really gonna put you in the holiday spirit, I think. This is a Norwegian film from 2,009. There’s been a follow-up to it, Dead Snow 2, in 2014. So, quite a few years later actually. And to be completely frank with you, the reason why we put this here isn’t just because it’s snow themed, it was rather convenient. We had a request for dead snow 2, Red versus Dead, and I happen to really enjoy that movie. I think it’s superior to this movie, but it seems really strange to review a sequel, right out the gate when we haven’t even reviewed the first one. And in this case, in particular, Craig hadn’t even seen the first one. So Right. We really felt like we couldn’t do the sequel justice until we had the first one to compare it to because the 2 do correlate quite a bit. So, this is Dead Snow, and it’s a Norwegian film. And it’s What did you think of it, Craig? I always start out by talking about what I think of the movie. I’m curious as to your take first.

Craig:  Well, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocolypse. And when we watched that movie, I said the zombie genre of horror is really not my favorite. I stand by that.

Todd:  Okay. Yeah.

Craig:  I don’t know. I mean, I we’ll get into details. I thought it was alright. Well,

Todd:  okay. No. I I think that’s fair. To be honest, I think it’s alright too. I don’t think this is particularly a standout movie in most respects. It’s certainly not original. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. It almost makes a nod to every horror movie cliche and director and film in every scene. Right? It’s so derivative of so many other movies. The night of the living dead series, dawn of the dead in particular, some of these kills are straight out of there. Some of the cinematography and gore is straight out of the evil dead. There’s just a lot of these nods, and at one point, even one of the characters is wearing a shirt, a t shirt that’s brain dead, which is the New Zealand the original New Zealand title of Peter Jackson’s movie dead alive, which is quite good. So this movie, even though it’s doing this, I think it’s doing it with love, and it’s doing it so obviously that you can tell that they are under no pretense here. You know that they’re making anything original. It’s like this movie is a tribute to these kind of all out gore splatter zombie films.

Craig:  Sure. And I appreciate that. I I really do appreciate when, you can tell that the makers of a horror movie are are really true horror fans and and that they want to give little tips of the hat to other movies. And characters in this movie mention, you know, Friday 13th, Evil Dead. They they mention these things by name. There’s there was a cute little nod even to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Yeah. Like, so I I appreciate that. And and it it it by no stretch of the imagination is it a bad movie, you know, I thought that there were some things going on. And the characters were, you know, clever and not totally run of the middle. You’re right, not totally annoying. As I’ve said before, and I’m sure there are people out there who will disagree with me, it’s kinda when you’ve seen one zombie movie, you’ve kinda seen them all, and, you know, in this one, they’re Nazis, and so that’s different, I guess.

Todd:  The writer director of this film, Tommy Wirkola, I mean, he did another movie before this, which was a takeoff of Kill Bill called Kill BuJo or something like that. This is his second film, and, it’s pretty good for a guy’s second film, especially Sure. Considered he wrote and directed. But he said when he sat down to do this, he thought, okay, well, what’s worse than zombies? Nazi zombies. And, you know, there’s a very, very, very small subgenre of zombie films that is the Nazi zombie subgenre. I mean, there might be, like like, a dozen, half a dozen. Maybe you could count them on one hand. That’s how many there are.

Craig:  That’s funny. But, you know,

Todd:  it’s such a good idea. Like, I don’t know. I really like this notion, and maybe it’s because in this case, the zombies have a sort of built in character. With a lot of zombie movies, the zombies are just people who died and for some reason are resurrected. Right. This case, the people who are resurrected as zombies are already they’re already the evil Nazis, and there’s a military sort of aspect to it as well. These these zombie Nazis have their uniforms on, you know, and then they act like soldiers in many respects. So it’s it’s kind of a neat conceit that I wish I saw. Honestly, I wish I saw more Nazi zombie movies being made. I think I think there’s something there to make it really well, it’s still gonna be a zombie movie, and you’re right. There’s still only so many things you can do with it. Yeah.

Craig:  And, you know, and it’s a little unique. I I read I didn’t write it Todd. I should have. But, I guess that these zombies are a mix between your traditional zombies and kind of this other Norse I think it was Norse, entity that, like, inhabits graves and, like, protects Treasure. Right. In these graves. And and that’s what these zombies are about too. So it’s like they’ve they’ve kinda got some motivation. It’s

Todd:  a purpose.

Craig:  Yeah. They’re not just randomly out, you know, killing whoever. You know, they’re they’re protecting their precious.

Todd:  Just thinking of the Leprechaun series. Right? Right. I am minoxidomb, and you have my gold. Exactly. Right. But that’s, I mean, that’s what kinda makes this film a little more unique. I think you have to give it a little bit more credit. Right? I do. Yeah.

Craig:  I do. I do.

Todd:  So there’s a goal. Right? And the reason the zombies come is because somebody’s got their treasure. Right. It opens up the way so many of these movies open up. Like, seriously, we’re probably not gonna go scene by scene through this film. But but but, I mean, honestly, you could take any scene out of this movie and draw a mind map of how it points to 15 other movies just like it.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s

Todd:  just it’s just a series of cliches strung together. And, of course, it’s 4 young adults in a car driving

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  To a secluded cabin. That’s it’s not in the woods. It’s up in the hills and mountains of Norway. And they’re going on vacations. Four guys, Their names are Martin, Vegard, Erland, and Roy. And they all have these very thinly drawn characters, which we basically know because the next scene is the girls driving up to meet them. Right. And in that scene, one of the girls says to another girl, so tell me about the guys we’re gonna meet. And the other girl starts rattling off their character traits. Well, Martin’s the attractive, studious one, and, Vegard I don’t know. Vegard has a bike, I guess. Erland Erland is a movie geek and won’t stop talking about movies, and Roy is probably the horniest guy I have ever met. Like, thank you for saving us the trouble. Right.

Craig:  It’s so funny. Like, okay. So this movie is in a different language, and so, you know, you have to read subtitles or whatever unless you do the English dub, which I rarely recommend. And I watched it with the subtitles. Usually I do all kinds of research and I write down all the characters’ names and their actors’ names. I didn’t have time to do all that, so I was just watching it and I was trying to keep track of who all these people were. So I just wrote down all their names, real quick. Got that off of IMDB. Yeah. And then next to them next to them, as I was figuring out who they were, I was, like, writing down their their defining characteristics.

Todd:  And so I’ve

Craig:  got Martin, glasses. Okay. Characteristics. And so I’ve got Martin, glasses. Okay. Roy, smart ass. Okay. Veyegaard, cute. Sara’s boyfriend. Okay. Erland, movie buff, fat. Okay. And that’s that’s pretty much their their characters. Hannah, dreadlocks. Got it. Liv, the blonde one. Okay. And Chris, the new girl. Alright. There we go. We’ve got our entire cast of characters. And, you know,

Todd:  you’re better than I am because, I try to just write them down as they as the names come up in the movie, and Liv’s name did not come up until, like, the last 10 minutes of the film. It drove me I know. Nuts. I just, finally I wrote a big underline in my notes, and I’m like, blonde girl. Right. But it’s it’s fitting too because, honestly, all these characters are pretty I can’t even really say they’re cardboard cutouts because they don’t necessarily adhere to these traits so strongly, you know. Yeah. They’re all just pretty vanilla, and we just get to know about enough just enough about them to care a little bit about them as the movie goes on. But otherwise they’re pretty thinly drawn.

Craig:  You’re right. I I think that they are thinly drawn, but in some ways that almost makes them even a little bit more realistic. Like, they don’t push these big stereotypical characteristics on them. They’re just kinda all of them are just kind of average Joe’s hanging out. Mhmm. And maybe that’s a little better than forcing these ridiculous stereotypes. I mean, Erland, the overweight movie buff, is pretty stereotypical. But beyond that, they’re, you know, they’re they’re they’re a bunch of med students on Yeah. We’re pretending Christmas, but really Easter break. And, they, you know, so so they’re going up to this cabin. You didn’t mention there the very first scene is somebody running through the the woods in the dark. Right. And I I thought I thought it was a guy at first, but eventually we get a close-up. And I’m, like, oh, wait. That’s a chick. She’s running from these unknown assailants, and, eventually they get her and kill her. And we come to find out later that that was Sarah who was Vergard’s girlfriend who actually owns this cabin that they’re going to.

Todd:  She’s supposed to meet them there. Yeah.

Craig:  Which is I don’t understand this really. Like, they all drove there, but she was gonna, like, cross country ski there. Yeah. Like, over this huge mountain range. Cool.

Todd:  It’s true. But what I’ve gotta say about this movie, and and you kinda touched on it a little bit there, is that all these characters are actually the fact that they’re kind of normal makes them pretty likable. Yeah. Sometimes we’re talking about, okay, so it’s a bunch of assholes who, you know, are stuck together. And in this case of the movie, I felt like these were people I’d wanna hang out with.

Craig:  Yeah. Sure.

Todd:  They go up to the cabin. They’re all probably in their mid twenties or whatever, and the first thing that these they do is they go snow tubing. Right? And Uh-huh. They’re, like, having snowball fights, and they’re playing Twister. And they’re not just, like, ducking into the corners to make out and drinking beer, making asses of themselves, you know?

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And, they’re waiting for Sarah to come. They park their cars down by the road, and then they have to hike to the cabin. Although, Vegard, I guess, he’s planted a snowmobile there earlier or something. I’m not quite sure. Or did they take it off the back of one of the cars? I’m not sure. But, anyway, he takes the snowmobile out ahead of them, And so their way, actually, to find the cabin is to follow his tracks. So he knows where it is because he was Sarah’s boyfriend. So they follow the tracks to the cabin. He gets there a little earlier, and it’s a pretty small cabin, but he lights a fire, and, pretty soon they show up, and then they have their fun. And then it’s that evening when, they get a little spooked. I think it’s, Liv maybe goes to the outhouse and she has kind of a creepy scene out there where we think somebody might be stalking her, and she runs into the cabin, and it turns out that there’s a guy who knocks on their door. And again, this is so movie cliche. It would’ve been more cliche if they’d run into him, you know, at a gas station, 5 miles out, but, in this case, it’s the older guy who comes, knocks on their door, and says, you crazy kids don’t really know much about this area, do you? He tells them a story. He says that, yeah, you know, around here back at world during World War 2, this was an important convoy stop between Russia and Britain for the Germans. And there was a group of them here, a platoon or whatever, and it was led by colonel Herzog. Whereas, in many cases in Norway, the Germans would get along with the locals more or less. In this case, they terrorized the locals, and so as and and they went in and at one point stole all of their gold and silver and jewels and watches and things. Just went door to door and looted all the people in the Todd. And if people didn’t like it, they just shot them in the head. And so, as the war was wrapping up, the townspeople decided to take matters into their own hands, so they went up with sticks and pickaxes and whatever weapons they could find, and they took care of this German platoon, Chased them up into the mountains, and they really weren’t ever seen again. So that’s the backstory that he delivers after he has some coffee, which he insults, after he asks for beer, which he drinks, and then rolls up a cigarette, which he smokes and puts out in the coffee that he didn’t like. The guy helps himself to everything. But, you know, he’s a good storyteller, and this scene was just again, it’s a scene out of these movies too, and it’s pretty economical. But it’s told like a campfire story.

Craig:  Yeah. But it is it’s so stereotypical and so silly because we have no idea who this guy is. We have no idea where he’s there. We have no idea what his purpose is except for to provide exposition. And then so, like, he says he closes his story by saying something like, there’s an evil presence here, one you wouldn’t want to wake, and then, like, he he gets up to leave and Roy, the smartass one, says something smartass and he like grabs Roy by the throat and he’s like, oh, you’re a medical student, Well, what would you do if your intestines were hanging out and you were holding them in your hands? Or what would you do They

Todd:  teach you that school.

Craig:  I don’t even remember the other things. Yeah. And then he just leaves, and, they’re like, oh, well, that was

Todd:  weird. Why they’re not a little bit more creeped out and maybe don’t get the heck out of dodge at that point. I’m not sure. The intestines line is pretty important, I think, because it seems to be a running theme through this entire movie.

Craig:  Oh gosh. I know it’s it gets really silly actually, but that’s okay. Then Vergard I had to go in like, I took all these notes, and then I had to go in and write their names above their descriptions because it took me so long. So originally, I had cute guy sees someone come from under the house. So, like, he wakes up he wakes up and he sits up in his bed and he sees somebody crawling out of this, like, trapdoor under in the floor. And we’ve seen this is where they’re keeping their beer, like, under the house, I guess, because it’s cold there and there’s, like, a trapdoor or whatever. He sees somebody coming up out of there and what and this person walks outside and he follows and he thinks it’s Sarah and so he keeps calling her name his girlfriend. He sees her and she’s standing there, but then she spits out a lot of blood. And then he sits up in bed and it was all a dream, which I don’t know. Like, this that that scene just seemed a little bit out of place. I guess it was it was like, okay. He needs a reason to be worried about her Yeah. Because because in the morning, he’s he’s he’s gonna have a bad feeling, and so he’s gonna go off and look for her. Like Pretty dumb. I felt, oh, I had

Todd:  a bad dream, so I’ve got a bad feeling. That she hasn’t shown up yet isn’t bad enough, you know.

Craig:  And then we cut to a scene of that creepy guy, who we don’t have any idea who he is or where he came from, and he’s in a tent. I don’t know. I guess he lives in this tent on the mountain. I I still have no idea.

Todd:  Unclear. You’d think that a guy who had this much warning about the area wouldn’t be camping out on the mountain. But,

Craig:  Right? Like like like, the zombie Nazis, like, are they just always around? Like Yeah. What is that? And, like, the townspeople know, so they just stay away. Like, I I don’t know. But, anyway, so he’s the aside from the opening scene where we saw Sarah get killed, this is the he’s the first one to get killed and he you know, it’s suspenseful. He hears something and he goes out and he’s looking around with his flashlight and then he kind of, brings his flashlight up on a zombie, but then something runs by him really, really fast and he, is just standing there and then he starts gurgling like, and we find out that his throat has been cut. And as he’s bleeding out from his throat, he retreats into his tent and then one of the zombies comes in and attacks him and he’s dead. And you know one of the things okay. So I’m explaining all of this just though it’s important, it’s not. But that was one of the things not that necessarily bothered me, but that I made note of. The the build up to this movie takes a while. Like, I feel like you almost get halfway into the movie before or at least half an hour into the hour and a half movie beef before the the real action starts to happen. And it’s not boring up until that point, but I was just kind of thinking, alright, they’re in a cabin in the woods. There are Nazi zombies. Let’s get to it. Like, what are we doing? All the numbers. Come on.

Todd:  Right? It’s the thing that bothers me about this movie is the motivation. And like you said, are there always Nazi zombies out? Again, I compare this to the Leprechaun movie where they find this gold and it’s the Leprechaun’s gold and that brings the Leprechaun to them. In this case, it’s the same idea, but before anybody finds any treasure, any of the stolen zombie treasure, we’re already getting zombie killings, you know, Nazi zombie killings. That’s a little problematic in my opinion.

Craig:  Yes. Because the next thing we see is, like, they’re partying, whatever they’re having a good time, Erlin goes to get more beer and, he finds in their under the house beer cooler this box, and it’s a box full of, like, gold and, you know, jewelry and stuff. In Sarah’s cabin. And that’s the thing. Like, how did it get there? Like, who put it there? When did it get there? Like, did somebody just recently put it there and now the Nazis are coming for it? Or, like, it’s been there for years years, but only now the Nazis are coming for it? Or they’ve been around all this time and they still haven’t found it? Like, I don’t understand

Todd:  it. It’s really unclear. It should be more clear. It because the movie makes a point of being really consistent about what it takes to appease the Nazi zombies. So it’s really important why they came out in the first place and got awakened. You’re right. He he he has an Indiana Jones quote, which is the writing is not the best, but it it it’s clever at times. At other times, it’s just a little too on the nose. And I feel like every time Erland spits out a movie quote, it’s like, oh, yeah. Gotta remind us that Erland is the movie guy.

Craig:  And he spits them out in English, which is always Yeah. Funny. And I don’t even know, like, he said okay. So they find this box of treasure and he opens it up and he says, fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory. And he says it in English which, you know, obviously, I’m, like, well, that’s weird because they don’t speak English. And so then I’m, like, wait a second. I I recognize that. What is that from? And it took me a second. I was getting ready to Google it, and I’m, like, wait. No. I know this. It was a temple of doom with short round cute stuff, and, like, I I like those little Todd. Great. Whatever. But the the the conceit of the treasure, it’s I mean, I get it. It provides motivation, but it’s so unexplained, like, it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but whatever. Who cares?

Todd:  It’s a great conceit though, like, the whole concept is cool. Yeah. Nazis who are dead who will come back to life to protect the treasure that they’ve stolen. Right. It’s really cool. It’s like the unstoppable evil. It’s the evil that continues, you know, even through death. It it’s so cool. It’s just so unevenly, you know, laid out in this movie. I if I remember correctly, the second the sequel of course, the sequels are, you know, it’s already set up, so whatever. But in the sequel, they’re a lot more consistent about this matter.

Craig:  Well, and that’s the thing too because the characters don’t know what the zombies motivation did is. Mhmm. And I I suppose if they did that it would make for a much shorter and less entertaining movie because they could just hand over the loot, but, you know, so it it seems like these zombies are just killing indiscriminately because that’s what they do. It’s not until the very, very, very end that one of the characters realizes, oh, well, if I just give them their pennies back, then they’ll be happy. Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. In the meantime, I don’t know if we’ve mentioned it, but Vegard had taken off on the scooter to find Sarah. So it’s the others here who find that, and they they decide to like have a party with the gold. Like this is like throw it like literally throwing gold coins up in the air and like wearing the earrings and just playing with it, basically. And I think

Craig:  Oh, it’s it’s just like that scene out of The Goonies when they find the treasure and they’re, like, putting on all the jewelry and, like, stuffing things in their pockets, like, woo hoo. And I think the point

Todd:  of this is in retrospect that the I Todd set this idea that every one of them has a piece of this treasure on them at some point, because you, like, you see somebody, like, slip a coin in their pocket and somebody else kinda, like, slips something up their sleeve or something like that. Right. So in retrospect, I think we’re supposed to I mean, it’s not there’s not a point made about it, but I think that’s kind of the point. Anyway, Erlen goes out to go to the bathroom in the, outhouse, and Chris, who has been really warming up to Earth Flirting.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Comes out and, basically mounts him in the most romantic place possible. Right?

Craig:  This is disgusting. Yeah. I’m so This guy’s sitting. Gross. No. It’s it’s worse than that, Todd. Like, he goes out and he takes he goes out and he takes a dump. Fine. Everybody poops. It’s all good. But then, like so then he wipes his butt, as you know, after you go to the bathroom. But then she comes out right after that and straddles him on the toilet. Okay. I mean, I guess, you know, they’ve gotta get away somewhere private. He’s already got his pants down, so fine. Convenient. Whatever. But then, I don’t even wanna say it. She she grabs his hand and goes to suck his finger, and he’s like Yeah. And he’s like, ew. No. Don’t. Like, he literally just wiped his butt with that hand, like, 5 seconds ago. And even he is like, ew, no. Don’t. I just wiped my butt, but she does it anyway.

Todd:  Yeah. And then Pretty gross.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s disgusting. This girl’s a freak. And then she

Todd:  But, you know, the whole time, what I’m thinking, during this scene, damn, it has gotta be super cold. Yeah.

Craig:  I was thinking the same thing especially because, like, she takes her top off, and I was like, you wouldn’t take it’s too cold. Leave your top on. I’m pretty sure I remember correctly that she’s wearing pants, but somehow I don’t know. She may

Todd:  As she get these off. Yeah.

Craig:  She manages to get them off as she straddling him, and they bone on the porta potty outhouse, whatever. Right. You know, in in in retrospect, it’s really kinda funny, you know, taking whatever opportunity they could to get away from everybody else. It’s kinda funny, and it’s funny when Erland walks back in, to the cabin and he’s just kinda strutting and he’s got this big look on big grin on his face and they’re like, did you see Chris? And he’s like, yeah. That’s all he says.

Todd:  All of her.

Craig:  Yeah. And, so then we cut back to her. I guess she needed to pee afterwards or something. So she’s still out there. And, she sees, one of the Nazi zombies peeping in at her, and she kinda freaks out. And she’s alone in the outhouse somehow, which I’m not sure I really understand, but somehow she gets pulled down into, like, the toilet part. Did she get pulled down or did it just happen to break or something? I I wasn’t even sure of that. I’m still not sure. All I know is she crawls back out covered in shit, and then Yeah. It’s really tough. She tries to make her way up to the cabin, and she’s she’s bleeding, like, she’s been impaled or stabbed in her abdomen. And and I still don’t know. Like, I don’t know if she was supposed to have been stabbed because all these zombies have these great big, like, bayonet knives. I don’t know if she was supposed to have been stabbed or just injured in her fall. I don’t know. But anyway, she starts making her way back to the cabin slowly, and she’s screaming, but they’ve got loud music on so they can’t hear. I think, Hannah eventually kinda hears something and turns it off, and they hear her scream, and she’s making her way towards the door. But just before Hannah opens the door, one of the zombies, like, attacks her and knocks her out of Craig, and so Hannah doesn’t see her. So they don’t know yet what’s going on. So they send the guys out to check stuff out.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s it’s interesting because actually, I think this movie is pretty well filmed.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  The suspense is there, you know. At a point, it it ceases to become suspenseful because it’s a zombie movie, and so everything’s just kinda happening out in the open. It’s more of an action film, I would say, after a while. But, but at the beginning anyway, when it’s more of a suspenseful horror film, I think that these sequences are really shot well. Maybe it’s just because they’re called from so many other sources.

Craig:  I don’t know. I would but I would agree with you like as in terms of quality, you know, it’s it’s pretty good. The acting is pretty good. The cinematography is pretty good. The one thing that I will say about the cinematography is that there are a couple of scenes that are pretty bad green screen shots. Right? Yes. Don’t you think so?

Todd:  Sure. Oh, absolutely. They stand out like like a sore thumb. They’re that bad. Yeah.

Craig:  I mean, it it looks like they filmed it at, like, the local news station in front of the green screen. And and there are lots of times when there’s blood just flying, just splattering, and it’s so clearly CGI that it Yeah. Pulls you out a little bit. Practical effects could have done you a lot of good here. And, you know, I don’t know. I have this was filmed But they did.

Todd:  They did a lot of practical facts.

Craig:  They did. They did. And so it makes me wonder why in these certain scenes it it looks so hokey, but who knows? Maybe it had to do with budget. Ultimately, it there’s so few and far between that it’s kinda like, okay. I I can forgive you for that. Yeah.

Todd:  Well, Hannah notices a there’s a gun above the door, and so the guys take the gun when they go out to look around, and they basically come back to the cabin having found Sarah’s pack, but no, no Chris. Right. And, so they’re in there, and they’re kinda wondering what to do. And Hannah sees Chris’s head in the kitchen window, and she’s like, oh, thank Todd. And then that head gets pulled up, and it’s actually severed. And this become begins That was cool. I thought that was cool too.

Craig:  I liked it. Mhmm.

Todd:  That might be one of the few original moments in this movie, honestly.

Craig:  It didn’t scare me, but No. One of the scarier moments when her head pops up and you we know she’s dead and and but but the other the girl doesn’t and, until then the the severed head kinda goes flying off to the side. That was good. But then it’s it’s then the the zombie siege, you know, like the zombies start attacking the cabin and it’s kind of scary and fun and it’s kind of funny because these characters react in a more realistic way than characters often react in these kind of movies and in that way I don’t wanna say that it’s meta because it’s not really meta. But, you know, it’s like these these characters are aware of zombie movies, you know, like

Todd:  They know what they’re in for right now.

Craig:  Right. And and because they know what they’re in for, they’re freaking out. Like, they’re screaming and freaking out and, like, Erland, the one who is the movie buff is, like, he’s Craig, like, oh, no. And he’s, like, don’t get bit. Don’t get bit. Yep. Which is so funny, but I can just that would be me, like, hiding in the corner crying, yelling at people, don’t get bit.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s funny. It it was good to put Erlend in this movie. It’s good to have a character kind of like that one guy in Scream. You know? Yeah. He’s gonna be Almeda and talk about movies in the midst of a movie about the movie that they’re in. But he’s the first one to go.

Craig:  And that really surprised me. I kinda figured he’d be around for a while.

Todd:  Well, he again, I felt like he’d be the guy in Scream who’d be kinda telling them what they need to do and what they shouldn’t be doing. But and and, honestly, he might have been the best drawn character up to that point.

Craig:  Mhmm.

Todd:  But, no. You’re right. He gets he gets he gets taken out in a pretty brutal way, and I think it’s straight out of, one of Peter Jackson’s movies where he’s pulled out halfway out the window and a couple of zombies, like, basically grab his skull from either side and pry it apart, and his brain even flops out onto the floor. And and at this point, they’re all staring at this having happened. I think it’s, Roy who says, I told you we should have gone to Sunny Beach.

Craig:  Yeah. Todd definitely has his clever moments. It definitely had moments that made me at least smile, if not laugh out loud. Like, it’s not hilarious. You know, there are some movies like Tucker and Dale or, you know, any number of other horror comedies that I’m laughing out loud. This one, I don’t laugh out loud so much at, but, you know, it Todd does have its moments. It’s cute, clever moments.

Todd:  I think there’s and I it’s not like I’m an expert on this, but I think there’s a distinctly Scandinavian brand of humor that this taps into.

Craig:  Yeah. I bet there is. Yeah.

Todd:  It’s kind of dark. It’s a little understated at times, but it’s still also a little over the top at times. Todd doesn’t get into hilarious like, Shaun of the Dead territory, but it but it really treads that line, but it does it in a very straight way.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. Like they all play it extremely straight in this movie.

Craig:  And you’ve already mentioned it, but credit to the actors, you know, they’re they’re believable and and reasonably endearing and and so, you know, you’re invested in what’s going to happen to them at least. You know, I didn’t care necessarily who was gonna die and who wasn’t, but but, you know, I was I was at least interested to find out.

Todd:  Yeah. And and that’s kind of the thing, like, I don’t really feel like this movie is that scary.

Craig:  No. No. I I don’t think

Todd:  it’s just because we’re so jaded. Like, hardly anything has scared us anymore. Right? Right. In this sense, I don’t really feel like anybody watching this movie would be terribly scared, because it’s it’s almost at this point that it becomes a pure action movie. Oh, you know everybody but one person is gonna live is gonna die, and so you’re just waiting to see how it’s gonna happen, and most of it happens during the day, and pretty much out in the open, and all of the and at this point I think all of the suspenseful scenes have pretty much passed.

Craig:  Yeah. But this is also a point where I kinda didn’t understand what was happening. So Vergard has been out looking for Sarah, and he found the dead creep guy. And so, you know, he’s kinda panicking, but then when he’s looking around, he falls in this big hole. Okay? So now he’s lost in, you know, we don’t know what’s going on. He’s in this underground snow cave.

Todd:  4th or something.

Craig:  The other guys in the cabin have just been besieged, which seemed like it happened at night, but then when we cut back to Vergard, it’s still daytime. And then and then when we cut back to the cabin, it seems like it’s daytime again. So I guess the whole night passed.

Todd:  And the siege just stopped?

Craig:  Yeah. They’re all they’re all just huddled in a corner and they’re, like, all of a sudden it’s really quiet. Why is it so quiet now? Good question. I wish that the movie would have answered it. Like Yeah. Like, they’re being besieged by this zombie horde, and then all of a sudden it’s like the zombies just go away for a while. Like Yeah. What? And so I was thinking, oh, well, they must only be able to come out at night, but, no, that’s not true. I I I guess it was time for their break. Like like, they needed they needed to go have a cigarette or something.

Todd:  Even even Nazi zombies gotta sleep, man.

Craig:  But, anyway, so the people in the cabin are trying to figure out what they’re gonna do, and and they know they don’t know the way back to the car because only Vergard knows the way back to the car, but they decide, alright, we need to split up. Somebody needs to go either try to find the car or try to go find the fjord. Like, what? Like, there’s a fjord? I don’t even know what a fjord is, but okay. And some of them have to stay as, like, distractions for the Nazi zombies. And so they decide that the guys are gonna stay and the girls are gonna go off. And so then we’ve almost kinda got these 3 parallel movies going on where the girls are off, you know, exploring and getting chased by zombies. The guys, Martin and Roy are back at the cabin distracting the zombies, and Vergard finds out that this cave that he’s fallen into is like the under the snow Nazi barracks. And so, like, they’re they’re all just fighting zombies off on their own. Like, they’re let’s split them all up so they can just all fight zombies separately.

Todd:  This is what this movie has been trying to get to this whole time. Its reason for existence is just to basically show people fighting these Nazi zombies and a ton of gore. Yeah. Like I said, it’s like an action movie. You know, Vegard has a big battle where he impales a Nazi through the eye and on a tree. Another Nazi zombie runs after him, and this this zombie that he had just impaled to the tree has his intestines hanging out. And somehow, when this other zombie comes to grab him, he happens to grab this this zombie’s intestines. And so this zombie, like, basically runs him off a cliff, but because he’s still holding onto these intestines, they spool out of the zombie impaled on the tree, and this is what they’re hanging by off of this cliff as he’s trying to beat back the zombie. It’s one of, I don’t know, half a dozen intestine scenes that we’re gonna get in this movie. There’s, these are really strong intestines that these

Craig:  Yeah. It’s ridiculous.

Todd:  But but it’s part of the comedy. I mean, it’s clearly a running gag after a while, you know, and so and I feel like this is, again, one of these Norwegian, like, senses of humor things that were that’s just a little off. I mean, it’s funny, but it’s maybe not as funny as it would look to another audience. I don’t know. That’s my guess anyway. So yeah, they do this, and, then the Hannah and Liv are running. Hannah takes out a zombie. Zombie punches out Liv, and she wakes up. I thought this was actually neat. This transition where Liv gets punched by a zombie, and you see this from Liv’s point of view. The very next shot is is obviously time has passed, but Liv’s eyes are open, and again we’re seeing this from her point of view, and it’s all blurry and stuff, and she looks down and we realize that the zombies are like pulling her intestines out.

Craig:  Right. They’re eating her, I guess.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. But specifically her intestines.

Craig:  Yes. It’s important.

Todd:  And she reaches over in her almost death and pulls a grenade off of one of these zombies belts and sets it off, which then Hannah and a few other people see from the distance, and which seems to wake up the Nazi general and his better troops, his officers, if you will.

Craig:  I’m I’m so glad that you just explained that to me because I had no idea what was going on. So I I knew that they, were, like, pulling out her intestines, and then I saw her grab something, but I thought it was a flashlight and I’m like Oh, yeah. Why does she need a flashlight? And then and then Hannah sees this big explosion, and I was like, what blew up? Yeah. That I missed that entirely.

Todd:  The grenades that the Germans used looked like, little batons, basically. You know, they weren’t like our style where you pull a pin, you squeeze it, and you toss it. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what that was. And so Well,

Craig:  you learn something new every day. Well, there you go.

Todd:  Little bit of of war history, a little bit of military history for you in this movie. It it just keeps giving and giving, that and anatomy. So at this point, it feels like it’s it becomes almost becomes a war movie, you know? Yeah. And that’s kinda what I liked about. I mean, this I thought was a cute aspect of the movie Todd, because at this point, the the guy who we don’t even need to be told, this guy is the Colonel Herzog because he’s the one who looks different from the rest of them.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And he’s the one who looks badass. He sort of steps into frame, and he’s got, like, his Nazi, like, commanders next to him and a line of Nazi soldiers behind him, and he even pulls out a set of binoculars and looks out. You know, like, he’s getting ready to order his troops to attack. Mhmm.

Craig:  You

Todd:  know, like, he’s got some strategy, And that’s what makes this a little different from your typical zombie movie. That’s why I kinda like the whole Nazi angle is because they incorporated a little bit of this into it. It just felt like a war movie at this point.

Craig:  Yeah. Well and eventually, Hannah battles some more zombies. Like, she ends up in a tree, and then they find her up there, and she jumps down and kills 1.

Todd:  The tree part’s cool, though. She climbs up this tree. Like, it’s wintertime. There are no leaves. I don’t know how she feels like this tree is gonna give her any cover. Right. She’s up at least she’s up higher than these 2 Nazis who are looking for her, And she happens to be up by a little bird’s nest, and this this bird starts attacking her. And so she grabs the bird and, like, beats it against the tree, like, 4 or 5 times viciously to get it to quiet down. I thought that was pretty cool.

Craig:  It was funny. It was funny but you, like, you totally saw the punch line coming a 1000000 miles away. Like, as soon as she kills this bird, she looks down and the Nazis are just standing down at the bottom of the tree looking up at her, like Yeah. And then one of them starts climbing up, and so she I feel like she grabs a broken off branch or something and jumps down and stabs the one still on the ground in the eye and runs off, and then she ends up on this huge cliff. And, the other nazi, who for some reason that I don’t understand is in, like, a white rain poncho. Yeah. What was that about? Like, did they wear I guess maybe they wore white rain ponchos in the

Todd:  I don’t know. I felt like maybe he got it off the the guy in the tent that they killed earlier or something.

Craig:  I don’t know. Anyway, so they end up on this cliff and she stomps so that the snow drift that they’re standing on falls off the cliff and they both fall down.

Todd:  Yeah. Like thousands of feet.

Craig:  Yeah. And of course, we cut away from oh, she’s dead. Let’s cut away from her. Of course, she’s not dead. We come back later and she’s still alive, but, I think that my favorite part is then we cut back to Roy and Martin and they’re like defending the cabin. And Roy or one of them, I don’t remember which one, One of them is making these Molotov cocktails, and as soon as he’s got it made, the other one, like, is like, okay. Throw it. And he, like, moves away so that the zombies can get in. And the guy throws the Molotov cocktail and totally just hits the wall of the cabin and sets the cap on fire. That was so funny.

Todd:  Martin gets on his cell phone and tries to make a 911 call.

Craig:  I know. I wish I wish it weren’t in a different language because I I would love for you to play this clip because it was so funny because he’s like, we’re in the mountains and something bad is happening. We’re being attacked by Nazis who’ve been here, like, I can’t even remember, like, but it’s just so ridiculous and the 911 operator hangs up and the other guy, whichever one it is, is like, don’t tell them that. Tell them it’s terrorists. They’ll be here with helicopters and bombs in, like, 10 minutes. But then, of course, conveniently, the battery dies. Yeah. So so they end up battling more, and they have to get out of the cabin. So they, run to like, one of them sees a shed, you know, like 50 yards away or whatever. They’re like, we have to run to the shed. And the other one’s like, what good is that gonna do? And he’s like, I don’t know, but what else what other choice do we have? So they run there and they get in there and it’s like a tool shed, and so there are all of these, like, instruments of death all around. And one of them is like, you know what we’ve gotta do. Right? And the other one’s like, yep. And so it’s a great setup.

Todd:  Evil Dead rip off down to the sound effects in the cinematography, the zooming in and the Yep. Yep. And this is when they come out of the shed, and they’re badasses. And the 2 of them take on a whole line of Nazis, zombies running, across at them, across the field, and they totally get completely gory, bloody all over their faces, which is You know, none of the characters really wipe their faces at all during this. I’m not sure.

Craig:  They’re covered in blood. I I could have watched probably just this last 15 minutes of the movie and thought, oh, yeah. This is a badass movie. Like, this last 15 minutes was a lot of fun. It really was. And so so ridiculous and so unrealistic. You’ve got these 2 guys armed with lawn tools, and like they’re just taking on wave after wave of these Nazi zombies and just annihilating them, cutting off their heads. One of them, I think it’s Roy, has, like, a little, like, a, like, a little miniature sledgehammer, and he’s just, like, bashing faces in and blood is flying everywhere and they’re just taking down zombie after zombie. It’s a lot of fun.

Todd:  It is. It’s super gory. It’s really gross, but it’s totally fun. It reminded me, actually, a lot of Peter Jackson’s dead alive for the point in which the guy’s just got the the lawnmower, and he just is mowing through hordes and hordes of zombies that really had that same flavor and and that same amount of satisfaction.

Craig:  Well, yeah. And then and Vergard shows up and helps them out and, like, he’s killing people with well, first of all, he got a machine gun from the Nazi fort, I guess. Yeah. That was

Todd:  a little unclear where that came from.

Craig:  But and he mounted it to his snowmobile so, like, he can take people out or zombies out with his machine gun. It’s been probably 15 years since I’ve seen dead alive, but you mentioned the the motorcycle Vergard takes out 2 or 3 zombies with his snowmobile, like

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Getting them underneath the motor or getting them sucked into the rotor or something. And, it’s

Todd:  it’s cool.

Craig:  It’s satisfying. And but at some point, Vergard and Roy and Martin are kinda having like a little heart to heart, like, where have you been? What have you been up to? Where’s everybody else? Oh, everybody else is dead. Sorry. And then, some zombies apparently sneak up behind, Virgard, and I kinda I expected him to be the hero because he’s been very heroic up until this point. Yeah. But the zombies just grab him and rip him apart limb from limb. And so then we’ve got Roy and Martin, and they continue fighting. And, I didn’t see this coming. We we saw a scene before that we skipped over where we saw that Hannah had survived that fall, and she took out the zombie that she fell with. And at one point, Martin is like hacking away at zombies, and, you see somebody grab his shoulder and he turns around and just hacks, and it’s Hannah. He he accidentally, kills Hannah. But this was entirely her fault. Don’t sneak don’t sneak up on people when they’re fighting zombies.

Todd:  Yeah. I felt like that that scene was really wedged in there. I felt like they just needed to get rid of Hannah, and they wanted to give Martin a moment.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  That’s all it was because it didn’t make any sense. Nobody would do that. And where did Hannah even come from? And why wouldn’t they have seen her coming? And why would she even so close to him when all the zombies were surrounding him and attacking him?

Craig:  And why would you sneak up on somebody who’s hacking away? Don’t do that. That’s stupid.

Todd:  Don’t do that.

Craig:  You got well, excuse me.

Todd:  Excuse me. Are are you finished yet? I’m back. I just want

Craig:  you to know. But, no, it does give him, like, a moment where he’s so horrified by what he’s done. And at this point, Herzog, the general, and his, like, 6 minions have shown up. And, so Roy is like, Martin, Martin, like, I’m I’m gonna need your help here, buddy. And so right at the last minute, Martin snaps, you know, back into reality and he and Roy, again take out all these, zombies except for Herzog. And so then they’re standing there just facing off with him, like, it’s just like a stare down. And I think my favorite line in the whole movie was, I think Roy says, let’s just sledge him and get the hell out of here. Like, let’s get this over and done with. And then Herzog leans his head back and yells. If it was something if he was saying something specific, I don’t know what it was because there was no translation on my screen, but an entire new army of zombies just rises up out of the snow. And we’re talking 100

Todd:  of zombies. These these mountains are just filled with zombies, like, planted like poppies.

Craig:  Yeah. Cross

Todd:  it’s like the sound of music. You sing and they will come springing forth

Craig:  in endless waves. I just remember that I almost skipped my very favorite part. At some point in all of this, Martin gets bit and, after all the zombies are dead, he’s like, I got bit. I got bit. You remember what Erland said? You can’t get bit. He’s like, I won’t turn into one of those things. And so he starts up the chainsaw and he’s like and Roy’s like, what are you doing? And he’s like, well, we’re medical students. We learned about amputation And so he saws his arm off, and then he lights a big fire and cauterizes it. Like, I just think it’s so funny. People do this in movies all the time. Like Yeah. It’s just, you know, oh, darn it. Guess I gotta saw off my arm and cauterize it. Carry on. But so anyway, he does it and, like, so then he’s standing there, like, I did it. And then another zombie pops out of the snow right in between his legs and bites his wiener, and so then he kills that zombie and Roy and Martin are just standing there looking at each other, and Martin kinda looks at the, chainsaw, and Roy’s like, no. No. No. Like, you can solve your arm. That’s one thing, but not your wiener. Come on, man.

Todd:  Scout’s guide to the zombie apocalypse would have gone there.

Craig:  Oh, I thought it was hilarious.

Todd:  I thought you were gonna talk about his line just before that when Martin is bit and he’s freaking out. And, Roy says to him, oh, come on. Isn’t your grandfather half Jewish? You don’t think they’d recruit someone half Jewish, do you?

Craig:  Yeah. That was a good one too. That was a good one. Yeah. There is some there is some good lines. Some good lines. But anyway, so then it’s Martin and Roy against the zombie horde, and and really there’s nothing they can do, so they just take off running. And, again, another instance where I kind of was confused as to what was going on, Roy stumbles and tells Martin to keep going, but then Roy gets up and he keeps running and this zombie comes along beside him and it seems like it hits him in the head and so he’s running and he’s holding his head, but then all of a sudden he gets caught up and it turns out that somehow he snagged his intestines on a tree? Yeah. How did that happen?

Todd:  I don’t think they could properly explain it, so they just

Craig:  did it.

Todd:  They just needed more intestine shots. Like, it felt like every character had to have their intestine spilled at some point.

Craig:  So he gets so he’s dead, of course.

Todd:  But not before he’s run, like, you know, I don’t know, 10 or 12 feet, and then

Craig:  With his intestines spooling out. Yeah. Right. But then okay. So Herzog and the other zombies are, like, standing around him as he’s dying and I feel like after he dies, Herzog takes off of him like a stopwatch or something, which, makes Martin realize they just want their loot back. So he runs back to the cabin which has burned to the ground and he’s digging through the ashes as the Nazis are coming, but he finds the box and, like, he turns around and they all Todd. And so they’re just standing there looking at him and one of Herzog’s lieutenants or something comes and takes the box from him and gives it back to Herzog and it looks like that’s gonna be it. Like, the next thing that we see is Martin running through the forest not being pursued, and he makes it back to the car with his one arm and he’s trying to get the seat belt on and he’s he finally gets that on. And then, he’s puts the key in the ignition and turns it, and one little gold coin falls out of the fob on the key chain. And we had we had seen, Hannah or somebody stash that away at some point, so we knew where it came from. It’s not like it was just, you know, out of nowhere. But he looks at it and he picks it up and he sits up and he just goes and we see a Nazi appear in the car window and bash the car window out, and and that’s the end.

Todd:  It’s a cool ending.

Craig:  It was. It was. Yeah. I know that there’s a sequel, but I know that there’s I I don’t know anything about it. And, so I was thinking that if this is gonna be, like, The Descent. Like, one character is gonna get away and then and somehow is gonna have to end up coming back for the sequel. And I suppose that could be true because we don’t actually see Martin get killed on screen. The last thing we see is the zombie punching through, the mirror. You’ve seen the sequel. I don’t know. Are any of the original characters back?

Todd:  I don’t think so. I don’t remember for sure, but I don’t think so. It’s the sequel I just remember, and and it’s been a while since I’ve seen that one too. The sequel I just remember as being a lot of fun, kind of Shaun of the Dead fun. Like, they really take the Now that we know all these Nazi zombies, the colonel Herzog becomes much more of a character, like, from the very beginning, and he has a silent personality to him, and they play with that a little bit, and, like, they’re they end up in a neighborhood, like, in a suburban neighborhood with tanks and things like that. It it really plays with the concept and ups it a whole bunch and really adds to the comedy. And I’m really I really think we ought to watch that as requested and, and have a look at it. Because as I remember it anyway, it’s a very different movie from this one. It takes a pretty unoriginal, in many respects, derivative film that is just a bunch of zombies killing people, and then takes that concept that they’ve set up and makes a really fun original fun movie out of it.

Craig:  Well, based on your description, I’m intrigued. I would watch it. I’m not gonna watch it today. I’m not gonna race out and get it, but I would I would watch it. You know, frankly in preparing to record this, and talk about it, I I wasn’t particularly psyched because I didn’t love this movie, but I also I I didn’t hate it, you know, like it’s not a bad movie. It’s not poorly made. It’s not poorly acted. I just thought that, you know, the story wasn’t particularly original. The jokes were, you know, funny, but not like laugh out loud, you know, crazy original funny. It was adequate. As far as zombie movies go, I’ve seen much worse, I’ve certainly seen better, but it wasn’t a waste of time. And would I recommend it to other people? I I mean, I guess, if you don’t have anything better to watch.

Todd:  Yeah. I understand, and I and I I think I feel that way Todd. But, you know, I think it also falls in that same trap that I felt that Scout’s Guide fell into. You know, since 2009 when this movie came out, we’ve seen much more clever horror comedies.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  At the point at which this movie did come out, I think if you had seen it in 2009, we probably would would have a different take on it. We probably would have thought it was a little funnier. We probably would have thought, oh, you know, they they kinda did some funny things with this, all these fun nods to the different films and the different genres. As a whole package, we probably would have enjoyed it more. Now because we’ve just seen this whole a lot of this done in a much better Todd, I think that you know, you kinda have to filter it through that lens as well. But I agree with you. You know, somebody’s gonna sit down and it today. It’s it’s not the top of my list for sure. I don’t think it’s hilarious. It has its moments. Yep. For for real gorehounds, this is this is gonna satisfy you, you know, about 20 minutes from the end. Yeah. Because it’s really like that. But but, again, I have other movies I would recommend if you’re a real gorehound and you wanna see more of that way over this for sure. But it takes place in the snow. Maybe it’ll put you in the holiday spirit if you’re living in a place where you’re not getting a lot of snow or blood. Yeah. This will do it. You got you’ve got white snow and you’ve got red. All you need to do is add your own green, and you’ll you’ll have Christmas. Alright. Thank you again for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook, on our web page, or you can leave us a comment. Let us know what you thought about this podcast and this film. The podcast themselves can be downloaded from Google Play, Stitcher, Itunes, anywhere you find your podcasts. We have a couple more holiday themed horror movies coming up this month, so please stay tuned. And, of course, let us know what other films you’d like us to watch as the new year comes along. Until that time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.