Ignore the fact that Dominik Hartl's zomcom doesn't contain a single zombie in lederhosen and focus instead on the vital life lesson that eating green luminous snow is even less advisable than consuming the yellow variety that Frank Zappa once warned the world about. Hartl and co-scenarist Armin Prediger clearly know their Romero from their Wirkola. They even find room for homages to Dan O'Bannon and Peter Jackson. But they aren't ones for complex exposition. So no reason is given why Karl Fischer's bid to beat global warming with some frozen chemicals should turn Russian investor Kari Rakkola and the local deer population into slavering pustulated monsters.
*Essentially, this is Green Room with flesh eaters instead of white supremacists.
But Hartl wisely presumes that his audience will be walking dead savvy and won't thank him for wasting time that could be taken up with decapitations, eviscerations and full-body cleavings. He also surmises that most will be familiar with all the old gags and manages to come up with some novel uses for snowboards, ski poles and snowblowers. However, there's a rusty Nazi machine-gun in the basement, just in case.
Essentially, this is Green Room with flesh eaters instead of white supremacists. The humour is scattershot and the performances are more bullish than accomplished. But Laurie Calvert makes a suitably dudeish hero and his waltz with Gabriela Marcinková around a dance floor filled with music-soothed revenants is charming. Besides, even though the combination of shakicam visuals and flash-cutting can't quite disguise the limitations of the effects budget, Nicolay Mayer's schlock make-up and Schwerthelm Ziehfreund's cervine animatronics are admirable and bang in the spirit.