Dead Snow 2

Cast View all

	Vegar Hoel	Martin
	Ørjan Gamst	Herzog
	Martin Starr	Daniel
	Jocelyn DeBoer	Monica
	Ingrid Haas	Blake
	Stig Frode Henriksen	Glenn Kenneth
	Hallvard Holmen	Gunga
	Kristoffer Joner	Sidekick Zombie
	Amrita Acharia	Reidun
	Derek Mears	Stavarin
	Bjarte Tjøstheim	Priest
	Christian Rubeck	Politiman
	Charlotte Frogner	Hanna
	Jesper Sundnes	Nazi Doktor
	Tage Guddingsmo	Zombie Navigatør
	David Skaufjord	Zombie Tanksjåfør
	Daniel Berge Halvorsen	Major Stubbe
	Guðmundur Ólafsson	Eldre Dame Talvik
	Ingar Helge Gimle	Doktor Brochman
	Carl-Magnus Adner	Bobby
	Ivar Lykke	Tarm Zombie
	Lars Sundsbø	Truck Driver
	Hanna María Karlsdóttir	Eldre Dame Talvik
	María Guðmundsdóttir	Dame I Rullestol
	Vera Hilmarsdóttir	Budbringer Fra WW2

Crew View all

Director	Tommy Wirkola
Writer	Tommy Wirkola, Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen
Producer	Ragnar Agnarsson, David Gilbery, Wayne Marc Godfrey, Arnbjörg Hafliðadóttir, Robert Jones, Arnaud Lannic, Christophe Lannic, Kjetil Omberg, Terje Strømstad, Kjartan Þór Þórðarson
Musician	Christian Wibe
Photography	Matthew Weston

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Edition details

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Notes

My quick rating - 6.6/10. Dead Snow 2, later rebranded as Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead, kicks off with a recap of the first film delivered by Martin (Geir Vegar Hoel), the unlucky survivor who famously hacked off his own arm in pure Evil Dead 2 fashion. If you’re worried the sequel might gently reset things, don’t be. It literally starts right where the first one ended, tossing Martin straight back into a snowy slap-fight with zombie Nazis. And I am glad it does.

After yet another narrow escape, Martin wakes up in a hospital and quickly discovers that his severed, infected arm has been surgically reattached. You don’t need to be a horror scholar to know exactly where that’s going, and Wirkola wastes no time milking it for both gore and laughs. The arm has opinions. Violent ones. And it sets the tone perfectly for a sequel that understands escalation is the name of the game.

Tommy Wirkola returns as writer/director, and this time he’s clearly been handed a bigger budget. Thankfully, more money hasn’t sanded off the rough edges. Instead, it just means Wirkola can afford a tank, more locations, and a significantly higher body count. The zombie Nazis are no longer content to loiter ominously in the mountains. They have ambitions now. World War II ambitions. After a stop at a WWII museum, Martin figures out the undead horde plans to finish the mission they were slaughtered before completing. Naturally, this involves recruiting more soldiers, the only way zombies know how: killing people and then touching their faces.

Here’s the twist - Martin’s zombie arm can recruit people, too. Suddenly, it’s undead fascists versus undead resistance fighters, which is not a sentence I ever expected to type with a straight face. While all this is happening, Martin accidentally alerts the Zombie Squad, an elite American team of undead-fighting specialists who fly over to Norway to help. They’re led by Daniel (Martin Starr), whom I realized I have been watching on Tulsa King, and his crew arrives armed, confident, and wildly unprepared for just how insane things are about to get.

Why stop there? Wirkola certainly doesn’t. The solution to the Nazi problem might involve resurrecting the Russian soldiers Herzog (Ørjan Gamst), the zombie Nazi leader, massacred during the war. Along the way, the Nazi advance leads to some wonderfully excessive pillaging, with intestines becoming frequent, enthusiastic participants. The bumbling policeman Gunga (Hallvard Holmen) is an idiot in the most lovable way, and the group’s zombie buddy (Kristoffer Joner) delivers consistent comic relief without wearing out his welcome.

The action is surprisingly well-choreographed, the Gore Factor is gleefully over-the-top, and the whole shebang has a morbid finale to the tune of Bonnie Tyler that’s just as expected. It even leaves viewers pondering that age-old question: Is sex with a zombie considered necrophilia?

Dead Snow 2 sits comfortably alongside the original - same silly tone, same extreme gore, and the same sense that the filmmakers watched Dead Alive on repeat and thought, “Yes. More.” A must-see for horror-comedy fans around Christmas who like their splatter served with a wink and a chainsaw.

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