Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead (2014)

I definitely dug the first "Dead Snow" - maybe not as much as some people who seemed to think it was a bit more "fresh" then it actually was, but it was certainly one of the cooler zombie flicks to have come out in recent years. Following that film's success, director Tommy Wirkola did some big studio take-off on Hansel and Gretel that I haven't seen (and probably will never...) and about five years after the first has drummed up a sequel to his zombie hit...

It picks up right where the original left off with the surviving guy from the undead Nazi mountain massacre being pursued by Colonel Herzog and his army after discovering that he still had that gold piece on him. During a high speed struggle, he crashes his car and wakes up in the hospital in police custody for the murder of his friends (apparently the zombie Nazis left absolutely NO trace...) and the commander's severed right arm surgically adhered to his own dichotomized stump. He escapes from the hospital, teams up with a group of zombie nerds and a gay museum clerk to defeat the growing army of zombies.

While I can't say that "Dead Snow 2" is better than the first - I still enjoyed it a lot. Maybe I just haven't sat through a zombie-comedy in a while, which sorta softened my 'take' on them. I don't know. Must be, cuz this one is MUCH more of a comedy than the first movie and, I must say, very few of the gags really 'landed' for me. From what I've heard, a lot of people hated this one for the fact that it was a much more Americanized continuation - with English speaking Norwegians and quite a few American actors thrown in. And also for the fact that 98% of the movie contains absolutely no snow. I definitely take issue with the latter, since I think the idea of 'snow zombies' is what made the first "Dead Snow" so 'stand out'. The sequel is set, primarily, in a much greener and more populated area, the Nazis have a war tank and the power to reanimate the dead with a magical touch is introduced as a variation of the 'getting bitten' artifice. There's also a glaring attempt at baseless and mean-spirited 'shock value' by showing a number of children - including infants and their mothers - and people in wheelchairs being slaughtered by undead Krauts. To be honest, I didn't have a hard time accepting all this and, to my own surprise, enjoyed the flick quite a bit. It delivers on the gore and gut-spilling and you have an all-out battle of Russian and German zombies so I can't rightfully nit-pick the small shit, here. If you hate zom-coms (I'm not a huge fan, myself, usually...) then you should avoid "Dead Snow 2", but if you're in a laid back mood for some dopey splatter, I'd recommend giving it a shot.