Put a little love in it.
Quick observation: Both John Ottman’s Urban Legends: Final Cut and Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow feature rabid-horror-fan characters who end up being killed by the antagonist early on. With the Ottman film, a lazy and cynical bit of goods near the bottom of the neo-slasher barrel, it’s hard not to see it as a nose-thumbing at its intended audience: The filmmakers believe themselves above this kind of genre frippery, and if that’s what you came here to see, well, this is what we’ve got for you, you big fucking “Fangoria”-reading loser. With the Wirkola film, the tone is shaggier and more open - it’s a loving and skillfully-made homage to the entire spam-in-a-cabin genre - and that gives the scene a significantly different feel. When the character is messily dispatched (while wearing a Braindead T-shirt, no less), the whole point of the scene is that every horror nerd, secretly or openly, harbors a desire to see themselves torn to pieces in a big wet makeup-FX scene. Getting your own kill in a splattery flick is something to brag about, and you get double points if it’s a zombie flick. The former film is made for cash, the latter film is made for the enjoyment of fellow genre nuts, and that’s a lot bigger than it sounds.
