Sunday, February 8, 2015

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead — Now With Improved Glop-O-Rama




You won't believe how the Nazi zombies gassed up the tank.



Not content with the undoubted triumph of 2010's "Dead Snow," Tommy Wirkola has made a sequel. "Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead."

This title is a little misleading, because the "red" refers to some Red Army soldier-zombies who are just as dead as the Nazi zombies.

However, we are dealing with a generation that thinks the Berlin Wall was an album by some old guys called Pink Floyd. So we must make allowances.

If you recall, in the first flick Martin and his dopey friends went to cabin way the hell out in the woods in Norway and accidentally woke up Nazi commander Herzog and his zombie battalion.

In that one, everybody died, including Martin's girlfriend Sara, who is now called Hanna, but is still dead.

But what we didn't know is that Martin got away, but somehow wound up with Herzog's arm in his SUV.

So when the EMTs found him, they brought along the arm, and the kindly doctor reattached it — to Martin, who had cut his own arm off with a chain saw when he was bitten and infected.

Got that?

Well, this arm is capable of all sorts of stuff, including superhuman strength and resurrections.



Martin finds he can do all kinds of neat stuff with his Nazi zombie arm


Now, your Nazi zombies are complex creatures, and rarely do they have a simple agenda.

So Martin thinks they might be satisfied by getting their stupid treasure back, but he is sorely mistaken.

No, they have to finish their original mission, which was to destroy a little town called Tvnkj or something.

There is a whole lot of plot here, and to boil it down a bit, what we wind up with are four teams: the Nazi zombie team, led by Herzog; the Red Army team, led by some big tall zombie; Martin's team, which consists of Martin, the gay guy from the museum, and three nitwits from the US who call themselves The Zombie Squad; and the police, who are only there for comic relief.



Zombie Squad geek poses for photo with his first confirmed kill



The film is in English, which makes it slightly easier to be confused but lacks the Ingmar Bergman atmosphere that made the original so deep and profound.

However, it expands on the original's highly creative use of intestines. I have never seen an intestine used as a gasoline siphon before, and neither have you,  I'll bet.

Wirkola breaks the Glop-O-Meter on this one. Heads, feet, guts, arms all roll. Explosions. Nifty hatchet work. Intestine as garrote, siphon, electrical wire. Necrophilia (implied). Pet zombie. Bad running joke about the language of seagulls. Norwegian cops with Irish accents. No nekkidity (automatic one-coil deduction). Very confusing.

Three coils.






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