One Minute Review: Dead Snow

I've always wondered whether, if a bad movie knows it bad, that somehow negates it's badness? After all, a stinker by any other name...as Shakespeare one said. If we were to take Dead Snow as a measure of this question, the answer would be no, badness does not compensate for badness. Even worse, this low budget Norwegian gore-fest is also painfully self-reflexive. It knows it's a movie and wants you to know it too. "How many movies can you think of where a bunch of teenagers go to a cabin in the woods without cell phones?" Asks one of the characters, which almost leads to a debate about whether or not Evil Dead 2 is actually a sequel to or rather just a remake of Evil Dead. Then, during a game of Twister someone asks why they even bother to play such a game. "Because Hollywood has taught us it's the best game ever," is the reply. I can't remember the last, or even the first time I've seen a Hollywood film pine over the brilliance of Twister. And then the gore starts as a group of hapless medical students are attacked by zombie cannibal Nazis after being warned of the evil that lurks near them by an ominous old man who looks kind of like Harvey Keitel and is apparently only out in the woods to tell these kids how dangerous it is to be out in the woods. Based on that description you should know if this movie is for you. If not, it's basically the same ol' thing.