Deep breath in, deep breath out
It has been a very long, very bad 2 weeks. I had some very scary family medical emergencies, spent the only vacation day I’ll have for the next 6 months rotting in bed, the heat is boiling me alive, and I missed Maxxxine in theaters. Since I’m not feeling very upbeat, I thought it was the perfect time to be a hater, and maybe examine why I am a hater.
I have heard nothing but good things about Dead Snow. It is the nazi-zombie movie. By far the most popular, and one of the better-rated. After many years of hearing what a fun time it was and its influence on the genre, I finally watched it earlier this year.
I hated it.
Review
A group of friends decide to vacation in Norway, unearthing some dark secrets from the past. A mysterious traveler warns them about the dark history of the village, but they choose to ignore him. If a local tells you the remote area you are vacationing in is sketchy, maybe listen to him…
There is one specific scene that turned me off this entire movie. If you’ve seen it, you probably know what I’m talking about (the bathroom). The writers and I are on very different pages on what we consider funny. To me, the film’s jokes were just kinda off-kilter (maybe it’s a cultural thing?), and overall I couldn’t nail down a tone. I wanted it to be funnier or more action/gore-forward. We ended up in a midground that didn’t work for me. Dead Snow is a horror-comedy, but it’s neither scary nor funny.
I didn’t feel attached to any character and every death was almost a relief. The kills were fun, but you can get some better chainsaw action in something like Evil Dead. The plot and lore are weak, which would be fine if there was something else I enjoyed to cling to but alas, nothing stuck.
I will applaud the setting. I love a winter horror movie and the bleakness of the snowy Norwegian wilderness at least kept my attention.
Do I just wanna be different?
I was never a cool kid. I was a huge nerd and while I wasn’t heavily bullied, I had few friends and got my share of giggles and backhanded compliments. I lacked social skills, fashion sense, and any sort of self-confidence. To compensate for this, I told myself I was somehow elevated from others around me. Sure I wasn’t pretty, but I could give you a full rundown of every iteration of Batman, so who’s really winning? I never actually thought I was better than anyone, I just wanted to believe that I had something special that other people just weren’t seeing. What’s the point of living if no one likes you?
I fell into nicher and nicher interests in an attempt to carve out a place for myself. Plane crash facts, weird art movies, music inspired by ventilation systems (true story). Please think I’m so smart and cool! While I genuinely liked some of these new interests, I was seeking these oddities out for the wrong reasons. They didn’t make me smart or cool or pretty, they just made me mean. I was jealous and deeply unhappy, and while I never became a bully myself, I ripped every girl I wanted to be apart in my head.
As an adult I’m still strange, I’m not much prettier, and I still struggle socially, but one thing I am not is mean. I have my moments of irrational anger at a colleague for being more successful, or envy of a woman with prettier hair, but overall I have worked very hard to become less poisonous. Pretty girls aren’t dumb or mean, someone else’s success isn’t my demise, and I don’t have to be special to be liked. I don’t even have to be liked to be worthy of life. The issue was never other girls, it was always just with me. I’m still an ugly duckling that never really turned into a swan, but we’re all just birds of a feather.
Long story short, I was worried my hatred of Dead Snow was another slip into a uniqueness complex. This thing is super popular and well-liked and I dislike it, am I subconsciously trying to dislike it to be different? I gave it a rewatch to be sure.
I’m proud to say that I am much more secure in who I am, I no longer see the world with so much hate, and I still don’t like Dead Snow.
And?
I don’t really recommend Dead Snow, but if you’re more of a horror-comedy fan than I am, go ahead and give it a shot anyway. I have heard the second one is better, but I have yet to see it.
Bonus:
No double features today, but here are some random niche interests that you may want to explore (but only for the love of it, not to just be weird):
Plane Spotting - it’s free
Raising quails - not free but it is cute
Picking fights on the Nextdoor app in a community you are not a part of - incredibly entertaining
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