Tipping its hat to "The Evil Dead" and Peter Jackson’s early gore flicks, Dead Snow 2 is a 90-minute symphony of skull-splitting sight gags, each one more revolting than the last.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
Cartoon violence and action, gore and humor, all rolled into one schlocky but enjoyable package.
High-spirited but hobbled by lame dialogue and sheer overkill, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead marks an instance where too much of a good thing means it just isn’t good anymore.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
If the movie’s hilariously cruel treatment of the halt and the lame upsets you, you can enjoy the crisp cinematography, operatically repulsive effects and frequently witty dialogue.
The Dissolve by Matthew Dessem
The makeup is really all there is to look at—visually speaking, the film is aggressively uninteresting. But beyond all Dead Snow 2’s flaws, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that it has undead soldiers in Soviet and Nazi uniforms straight-up swinging pickaxes at each other.
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
The first Dead Snow included a salute to the classic Sam Raimi gearing-up montage, with its quick cuts and abrupt zooms; it was a cute nod, but nothing more. Red Vs. Dead does the same thing, but concludes the montage with a long, static shot of the Zombie Squad watching as the cash register at the hardware store churns out an endless receipt for all the tools they’ve purchased. That’s an actual joke, which is what the first movie lacked.
Slant Magazine by Rob Humanick
By formally acknowledging the material's inherent silliness ad nauseam, the filmmakers have distanced themselves from the spirit of the parody, robbing it of its gruesome pleasures.
The film is playful throughout... Unfortunately, the shoddy treatment of the film's sole LGBT character and a tendency to use people in wheelchairs as punchlines mar this otherwise delightful gruesome confection.
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
As bad-taste splatter comedies go, "Dead Snow 2" is one of the more charitably nutty ones, less about gorging on gore than reveling in how silly the whole genre can be.
RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams
It's for-horror-nuts-only, but if you can see it with a rowdy crowd, Dead Snow 2 will appreciate exponentially.