Dead Snow (2009) Chainsaws, Nazi Zombies, and Outhouse Sex

Years ago, and I mean MANY years ago, I was an exchange student to Sweden. It was easily one of the greatest years of my life, and a great memory of how things were before the undead rose. There were definitely no Nazi zombies on any of the ski trips my host family took me on and I don't remember any machine gun snowmobiles. One thing I can tell you: northern Scandinavia during winter is absolutely gorgeous.

Dead Snow (aka Død Snø) is a fun little Norwegian movie directed by Tommy Wirkola, and written by Wirkola and Stig Frode Henriksen. There was considerable hype leading up to my viewing of it, and while it didn't replace Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland as my favorite zombie comedies, it was still a joyful, bloody little romp through the snow-covered mountains of Norway.

When the film opens, a young woman run in pure panic through the dark Norwegian wilderness, pursued by something we can't quite see. She tumbles down a hill, breaking her leg and ending up trapped in a thicket. Whatever was chasing her catches up and engaging in a growling feast as the main title appears on the screen.

From there, we meet a couple groups of cheeky medical students. The men: catalog model-esque Vegard, studious Martin, dirty-minded Roy, and nerdy Erland. They're on their way to Vegard's girlfriend Sara's cabin for a little ski trip full of snow and a high potential of bumping uglies. In the other car are three of the four women: sensible Hanna, sexy-nerdy Chris, and quiet Billie Piper-lookalike Liv. The fourth is Sara, who we later learn is legging it through the wilderness to get there. Uh-oh. That means the woman in the beginning...? Yep. That was Sara.

Beer?

The vacation kicks off just fine, as they typically do in these movies. Vegard brought his prized snowmobile and after setting out ahead of the others to warm up the cabin, gives everyone inner tube rides. No, that's not a euphemism. Everyone wonders where Sara is, but the party rages on into the night. There are couples, as Martin and Hanna have paired off and Chris periodically flirts with Erland, much to his surprise. A knock on the door might mean Sara's joined the party, but alas, no. It's a strange hiker who somehow - don't ask me - found the cabin and wants nothing more than a cup of coffee and to share a terrifying story of a cruel Nazi officer named Herzog. Seems Herzog held the local town - a port for the Nazi navy - in his iron fist, robbing and slaughtering townsfolk until they rose up against him. He was forced to head into the hills, where he and his men were never found. After his rousing story, he's off to continue his hike. Not long after he sets up camp, some fast-moving shapes slit his throat and attack him in his tent.

The next day, Vegard decides to take the snowmobile to look for Sara. He instructs the others to go get help if he isn't back by the following day, then takes off into the mountains. The others, though originally spooked by the hiker's story, continue the party after Vegard leaves. While groping for more beer, Erland finds a box full of gold trinkets and German medals. The medical students are overwhelmed with joy and some proclaim to do what I'd do: pay off their student loans. Vegard, meanwhile, not only finds what's left of the old hiker, but falls into a snow-covered cave.

After night falls, things start getting darker and I'm not talking about the sky. It's all fun and games at first. Erland shuffles out to the outhouse to have a bit of a dump, and we all know outhouses in horror films are bad news. In one of the most outrageous scenes in the movie, Chris finally makes her move on Erland. In the outhouse...AFTER he "releases the hounds." And to add to the gross-out factor, she sucks on his fingers. I thought employees were supposed to wash after using the restroom.

Outhouse sex...this can't end well, zombies or no zombies.

Well, they have their fun and Erland returns to the party so Chris can use the facilities. You know someone's going into the toilet when a horror film includes an outhouse, and sure enough, in goes Chris. Sadly, she'll never get to profess her continuing feelings for Erland. Instead, she meets Herzog's men and they didn't bring flowers or even a six-pack of Carlsberg.

The zombies attack the cabin, forcing the students to barricade the place. Erland, the resident horror movie nerd, proclaims them zombies and tells everyone not to let them bite. Not long after that, Erland is ripped apart by several zombies in one of the wackiest on-screen deaths in a while. Basically, they pull his skull apart until his brain plops neatly on the floor. Insanity, I tell you. Erland's body seems to be enough for the Nazi invaders at this point, so the other four are able to last the night.

Vegard, as it turns out, isn't dead. He wakes up and explores the cave, finding Nazi flags and helmets, not to mention Sara's severed head. He fights off a couple of the zombies, even using one's intestines to keep from falling into a gorge. This doesn't, however, prevent him from being bitten badly on the neck. After stitching himself up - medical student, after all - Vegard scores a sweet machine gun from the bunker and attaches it to his snowmobile.

Hell. Yes.

Back in the cabin, the four survivors decide to split up. The men set out to distract the zombies while the girls make a break for the cars. Hanna and Liv run, then split up to escape throngs of zombies. Liv is taken down and disemboweled, and in a very cool perspective shot, we see it through her eyes. She smartly sets off a hand grenade attached to one zombie and is able to take out a couple. Hanna keeps running, doing battle with a zombie on a cliff as she intentionally cracks the ice shelf holding them up and they tumble into a valley.

What they wouldn't give for showshoes right about now.

Roy and Martin discover the shed has all sorts of handy weapons and in a scene obviously in tribute to Bruce Campbell arming up in Evil Dead II, they prepare for battle with chainsaws, hatchets, and sledgehammers. In a truly fantastic battle scene full of zombie cannon fodder and stark gore on white snow, the pair actually win the first round, but not without casualties. Vegard shows up and mows down a ton of Nazi undead before being literally ripped apart. Hanna survives the fall earlier and makes it back, only to be accidentally killed by Martin while in a battle rage. Never, ever try to grab a guy covered in zombie blood and swinging a hatchet. Still, a victory is a victory...

That is, until Herzog bellows for reinforcements.



Oh, shit.

Another battle ensues, but Martin is bitten. Remembering what Erland had said about zombie bites, Martin takes his own arm off with the chainsaw. Hardcore.

Herzog calls for even more zombies, so Plan B. Plan B involves running really fast. It works for a while, but Roy is cut down by Herzog. Before devouring Roy, Herzog loots him. This gives Martin an idea. Remembering the box of gold things in the now-burnt-down cabin (thanks to Roy's poor Molotov cocktail-throwing skills), Martin returns there and digs up the box, handing it over to Herzog. This seems to please the undead officer, and Martin makes his getaway. He reaches the cars and tries to start one, but notices a gold coin fall to the floor. Martin picks it up and slowly straightens to see Herzog outside the window. The Nazi officer smashes the window and reaches for Martin...and that's the end.

Dead Snow didn't totally blow me away. There were some moments that seemed like a stretch, but hey, if the purpose of the movie was to throw some crazy images, beautiful scenery, and wild zombie kills my way, then it succeeded. Unless I missed it, I would've liked to have a touch more of a hint as to how Herzog and his men became the undead. The ill-fated hiker mentioned the area had an "evil reputation," but that's not quite enough for me. I've been to some bars with an evil reputation, but didn't come out undead. Felt like it the next morning, though.

The acting was quite good and once you know who's who, you do grow attached to some characters. The scenery is gorgeous, but at the same time reminds you how isolated the area is. Herzog made for a menacing villain, with subtle facial expressions that gave him a definite air of evil. As if the Nazi uniform wasn't evil enough. And you can't totally fault a movie that has chainsaws, sledgehammers, and a friggin' machine gun snowmobile:



Those of you in a winter state, use that as a manual to deal with the undead outside your shelter gates.

See you next time, survivors!

À l'intérieur (aka Inside) (2007) - Um...Whoa

Of the four French extreme movies recommended to me by my dear friend Andre from The Horror Digest, À l'intérieur (aka Inside) was the only one that arrived to me with a reputation preceding it. I had read various accounts of the most steel-stomached viewer feeling an urp of queasiness upon watching certain scenes of this movie. I'd better dollars to raspberry jelly-filled donuts I know which scenes they spoke of after watching it. I had that fluttery anxiety to see things unfold and it reminded me of that same feeling arising when I first viewed movies like The Thing and The Exorcist, where my own subconscious had built up a reputation for each of those films.

Inside is, as I mentioned earlier, a French film and has many of the elements of the other French extreme films I reviewed. I'll get into some of those similarities later, but right now, let's get the introductions out of the way and dive right into the review:

Remember: Possible spoilers abound!

Directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, it takes place mostly around Christmas Eve in a Paris suburb. We're given a setup as the movie begins, right in the womb where a baby rests comfortably until the screeching of tires and a horrifying crash. The baby hits its head and blood fills the amniotic sac. In the outside world, we tragically meet pregnant Sarah (Alysson Paradis) and her husband, Matthieu (Jean-Baptiste Tabourin). There has indeed been a horrible accident, and its claimed the life of Matthieu.

Flash forward four months, and Sarah is still bearing the physical scars of the accident. The mental scars run so much deeper, it's not even funny. Sarah has become anti-social and withdrawn (although that creepy nurse would drive me into a shell, too). Her mother Louise (Nathalie Roussel) wants her to be with family on the holiday, and everyone including her boss, Jean-Pierre (François-Régis Marchasson), only want the best for her during what has to be an insanely difficult time. Sarah just wants to be left alone with her photography and fantasies of Matthieu still being alive. Nice creepy/romantic scene when she imagines his embrace, and his hands slowly glide across her pregnant belly before she's snapped back to reality by the doorbell.

If there was ever a moment in film where you wanted to yell out "don't answer that door!," this would be it. On the porch, in the shadows, is a mysterious figure. A woman with a rather deep voice begging to use the phone as her car has broken down. Sarah's wary, and lies to the woman, saying her husband is asleep and doesn't want to wake him. The woman (Béatrice Dalle) suddenly knows Sarah by name, and knows that Matthieu is dead. She still demands to be let in. Freaked, Sarah tries to snap some pictures of the woman through a kitchen window, but only gets a faint shot of her face. The police arrive to find nothing, promising to check in on Sarah every so often.

Sarah develops the film, including shots from the park earlier that day and actually sees the woman stalking her in one of them. It's sinking in that this is really serious now. Exhausted and sure the woman is gone, Sarah goes to bed. This is where we see more of the mysterious, unnamed woman as she pads through the house, collecting various items like alcohol and scissors. Yeah, sharp objects. Pregnant woman. Insane lady. This does not add up to a desirable situation for Sarah. As you might think would happen, The Woman attempts a C-section right there in the bedroom. She gets as far as the scissors entering the belly button before Sarah is shocked awake and manages to escape to the bathroom.

The Woman is, yes, certifiable. She makes it clear that she wants Sarah's baby, and it's pretty damn obvious that she'll do anything to get it. The Woman finds her plan isn't perfect, though, as Jean-Pierre shows up to check on Sarah. Meeting him downstairs, The Woman leads him to believe she is Sarah's mother and brings him a drink. Then, like a Three's Company episode broadcast in Hell, Sarah's real mother shows up, demanding to know where her daughter is and who The Woman is. Louise heads up the stairs to find her daughter, but a case of mistaken identity causes a spike to find its way into Louise's neck. Sarah has accidentally killed her own mother. That on top of everything else - the side kicks to the emotional center of Sarah's brain are relentless.


Jean-Pierre dashes up the stairs to see what's causing the commotion and finds a bloody Sarah pleading for help. Her, and the blood-soaked body of Louise. Before Jean-Pierre can react, The Woman stabs him behind each knee, in the nether regions, and repeated in the face before slashing his throat. This woman is...a little off. Jean-Pierre isn't quite dead yet, but a pillow on the face and one random stab there is all it takes. Surely the body count can't rise any more, right?



Here come the police, with a recent teenage arrest in tow, to check on Sarah, just as promised. Two of them talk with The Woman, but they aren't convinced - Sarah's pregnant, The Woman is not. One heads up the stairs to find Louise and the splashes of blood, then tells the other to arrest The Woman. She's prepared though, and shoves a knitting needle into the cop's eye before taking his gun. The upstairs cop finds Sarah - or rather her left arm, impaled by the hand to the wall by a pair of scissors. He frees her and before he can do much of anything, half his head is blown away by The Woman, who keeps firing at the bathroom door. The cop outside hears it and drags his teenage prisoner in to investigate. They discover Sarah huddled in the blood-painted bathroom and it looks like maybe, just maybe, Sarah could get out of this. Then the lights go out. The cop tells Sarah to go to the bedroom and wait there while he and Abdel try to fix the lights. That doesn't go so swimmingly, as The Woman shoots the last cop in the head, then stabs Abdel in the forehead with the scissors.

When Sarah makes her way down the stairs, she discovers the bodies of...well, pretty much everyone. Scooping up a knitting needle, she confronts The Woman, but this time with her own twist. She aims the needle at her own belly, threatening the child this crazed lady wants so badly. Still unrelenting, The Woman brains Sarah with a toaster before crouching down to light up a gloating cigarette. Sarah's not down yet, and in a scene that actually had me cheering out loud, she sprays The Woman with oven cleaner just as she lights up. Fireball to the face! With most of her hair on fire and half her face scorched beyond recognition, The Woman retreats while Sarah gives herself an impromptu tracheotomy (which provided a real eww moment with blood bubbles). She then fashions a crude spear and searches for her assailant.

The Woman cowers in a closet and as Sarah's about to deliver the killing blow, all the cards are set on the table. Turns out The Woman does have a connection to Sarah: she was in the other car in the accident. It was her baby we saw at the beginning of the movie, and it did not survive the accident. The Woman wants Sarah's baby to make up some kind of twisted settlement in her fevered brain.

Suddenly, the lights come back on. At the junction box is the last policeman assaulted by The Woman, his stance wavering. How he's alive after being shot in the head is anyone's guess. When Sarah tries to talk to him, his confused state of mind confuses her for The Woman and he attacks her, hitting her in the stomach with a baton. He's enraged and almost demonic...I mean, look at his eyes when you see this. Also, look at the address of the house: don't know the street name, but the number is 666. Was there a secret subtext there, I wonder? From out of the blue, The Woman actually rescues Sarah, or actually the baby, by stabbing the policeman to death with the homemade spear.



Sarah's in labor, though, and The Woman calmly performs the C-section she set out to do earlier. The camera does not shy away. I mean, you are made to stare directly at Sarah's belly as The Woman does what she can to open it up and reach inside to deliver the baby. The last shots are of a defeated and dead Sarah lying on the stairs, as the scarred Woman settles into a chair with the baby, alive and presumably well. Fade to black.

Brrr.

There are a lot of constants in these French extreme films, not the least of which is a strong female lead. Not only is she usually a great actress on the real life end of things, but the character has to have some otherworldly resolve. There is also a conservation of cast members. With the exception of Frontier(s), the casts of these films I've enjoyed have been fairly small. It lends itself to the next area I found to be constant, the visceral emotions that really make up the genre's definition. Feelings of being trapped, being pursued with no routes for escape, the loss of dignity and personal power (see: hair cutting). Add to that this basic but powerful basis for fear: pregnant woman assaulted by psychotic with sharp instruments. Pregnant belly. Sharp. See, no matter what, those two phrases do not go together. Like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho capitalized on the visceral fear of naked vulnerability in the shower scene, this film takes those phrases and forces them together with disturbing results.

So, yeah, the reputation of this movie was well-deserved. If you think there might be just a little blood in this movie, you're severely underestimating it. Hell, the title credits are set against a swirling bloody background. This film tells you to leave your stomach at the door because you may lose it before it's over. But if you want something intense and just a tad over-the-top, definitely introduce it to your DVD player.

I know I'll be studying the shadows a little closer...

Martyrs (2008)

So I was looking for something different. I often jump around the international horror genre and thought, "where are some places of which I'd like to see more?" I didn't feel like a zombie movie (I know, shock of shocks) and have recently had a string of disappointments in the Japanese ghost genre so I wanted to have a break from that for a while. I'm always open to recommendations and the one for the 2008 French film "Martyrs" came from Andre Dumas, author of the great horror blog The Horror Digest. She did not steer me wrong on this one. Not by a long shot.

"Martyrs" was directed by Pascal Laugier and not only stars but showcases the tremendous acting talents of Morjana Alaoui and Mylène Jampanoï. I mean, they are so good in this, my paltry words do little justice to their talents.

As I begin, let me tell you that to discuss too much of the plot is to give too much away. The twists and reveals that unfold in this bloody thriller are so much a part of the ride, it'd be like showing you a blueprint of a roller coaster, then taking you on it. No way. Much like the first time I road a roller coaster a mere seven years ago when my brother said, "let's just ride the biggest one and see if we like it." "Martyrs," much like that roller coaster, was something I liked very much. So I'll show you the roller coaster, which may involve some little things revealed, but it's up to you to ride it.



I'll take you only so far in the recap, but after that, you're on your own. A young girl, bloodied and beaten, stumbles out into the harsh daylight from a run-down abattoir (full of rust and decay - see my earlier post on how much I enjoy buildings like that). She is tense with fear and adrenaline, and as she starts running, she allows the screams to finally escape. The girl, Lucie, is rescued and raised at an orphanage as the investigation into the building reveals nothing but some remnants of her torture. Standing out in particular is the chair to which she was chained, a hole in the seat providing a place for her to relieve herself. Immediately, you, the viewer, want to get your hands on the vile filth who put poor Lucie through that.

At the orphanage, Lucie is at first anti-social and withdrawn. One brave, compassionate little girl, Anna, reaches out to her and becomes her best friend and sister figure. But being friends with Lucie isn't easy. The nightmares never left her. Not only that, there is a mysterious, violent figure that haunts and attacks her.

Cut forward 15 years. An affluent French family enjoys a nice breakfast full of banter and teasing, mixed in with some teen angst. The daughter is a champion swimmer. The son is a restless genius. The doorbell rings and as the father answers it, an adult Lucie (Jampanoï) blows him away with a double-barreled shotgun. Weeping and shaking, Lucie systematically kills each member of the family before breaking down, then calling Anna to come help her. Anna is terrified. Lucie was supposed to confront the couple. Why? From a newspaper article on the daughter's swimming exploits, Lucie swears the parents are the couple who tortured her all those years ago. Swears that it's them. But Lucie has some serious problems. That mysterious person, a horribly disfigured, growling woman, repeatedly stalks and attacks her in the home. Anna is there to calm Lucie down, even getting her to sleep, but it's no easy task. Anna takes it upon herself to dispose of the bodies, but even that has its complications, as you will see.




It's not long after Lucie's final breakdown that the movie takes another of its sharp, 90-degree angle turns and almost throws you from the ride. Oh, yeah, and get ready for more because they're coming. Did I mention the bloody, brutal house of horrors section of the ride? Yeah, steel yourself for that, too, because it is relentless. "Martyrs" takes you from believing one thing, to revealing that there is something much, much deeper. Much, much more sinister. There is a moment while Anna is talking to her estranged mother on the phone from the family's house that involves a door. A door that wasn't there just minutes before. It is the moment that your roller coaster gets that much more thrilling, more intense. What happens after that will run your poor little soul straight through the wringer. You will learn what the title of the movie means. Let me just say two words as a clue: manufacturing martyrs.

The ending is...well, I won't give you a shred of what happens in the last portion of the movie, but it's open for interpretation. It will leave you thinking about it long after you power down your DVD player. To me, that means something. I haven't mulled over an ending like this since "The Mist."



I cannot gush enough about this movie. The acting set the bar high. The photography and direction is beautiful, bordering on Hitchcockian. I understand that Laugier is tabbed to direct the remake of Hellraiser. I'm not often keen on remakes, but Clive Barker's creation would be in good hands if this film is any indication of the type of product Laugier will put out. Oh, and the twists and turns, the twists and turns...

It is a roller coaster that will blow your mind, slug you in the gut, and headbutt you...and you'll ask for more.

So make some popcorn and enjoy the ride.