This is Better Than Dead Snow

I just saw Dead Snow and Shock Waves is miles better. Modern rock music in the beginning theme and in the film itself is one thing that brings it down for me. If teens wouldn't like the film without it, they wouldn't think much of it with it. Shock Waves only has creepy atmosphere music, which is the best route to go for a horror movie.

The Dead Snow characters themselves said what a horror movie cliche it is for a group of teens or college-age people to be in a remote cabin or some similar setting. A movie that intentionally uses such a cliche and acknowledges it is hard to take seriously. If you know it's a cliche, don't use it! On the other hand, I believe Shock Waves had an original setup, reminiscent of a serious version of Gilligan's Island. And ...*gasp* it had post college-age characters! What do you know?!

Too bad there are no big name actors that are mainly or largely associated with horror these days. If they are in the movie, you pretty much know it will be good. The old man in Dead Snow was okay. I don't really know much about him as an actor. But in Shock Waves you had horror movie icons Peter Cushing and John Carradine. You also had Brooke Adams who could have been on the way to becoming one if she would have kept it up. She could have been the next Barbara Steele.

The zombies in Dead Snow ate people. Don't all zombies in post 1970's movies? That's another cliche for zombie horror flicks now. There's nothing wrong with zombie's just killing. The Shock Waves zombies didn't eat people and they had a further dimension to their characters by having an original movie monster weakness (removal of light dimming goggles). I don't think that weakness was ever used before or since.

The spooky, abandoned hotel was also a great thing about Shock Waves. In Dead Snow, there were no spooky settings.

Shock Waves- still the king of Nazi zombie movies (at least until I see the others, but this is a REALLY tough flick to top)

Which is why I like Shock Waves soooo much better. I want horror films to take themselves seriously!

I bought Dead Snow months ago, but for whatever erason could never be bothered to actually watch it. Maybe my brain was trying to tell me something, as when I watched it the other week I was bored out of my mind and thoroughly disappointed. The monologue the old man gave was the bext part of the film; I think there were a few other nice dialogue moments (and an amusing Arnold impresion), but I didn't care about what hapened to anyone, and the zoombies were rubbish. Give a film Nazi zombies and you should make them Nazis, have one or two speak some German and maybe heil the fuhrer, or at least all wear swastikas or goose-step or something. These guys were rubbish, only the commander at the end was a little unique, and even then not by much. Overall I would say it was a terrible film which for the most part was not funny and certainly not enjoyable. What's stranger is my recollection of this getting decent reviews, but it's quite possible I am imagining this.

Shock Waves on the other was excellent. I think by chance I happened to watch it the same day as Dead Snow (maybe the day after). A great atmosphere and good monsters (I now they kind of break my Nazi zombie rule above but they were still interesting and creepy.. and blond). Plus a great cast and, oh yeah, it was interesting and I cared about the characters.

Time to blow