"Pontypool", set almost entirely inside a small radio station in Canada, has some genuinely creepy and scary moments, and a very unique rationale for the spread of the zombie infestation. It gets a little confusing near the end, but for the most part it holds together.
"Outpost" is pretty good, though it could have been much better with some more thought to explaining exactly what was going on. Like "Dead Snow", it deals with Nazi "zombies", although their true nature is never quite clear. But it has some nice atmospheric sets, good acting, and features Ray Stevenson (Titus Pullo from HBO's "Rome" series) as the lead.
"Dead Snow" was the biggest disappointment. I had been aware of the existence of this movie from various reports on the Internet, mainly from the "Ain't It Cool" website. I'd seen some intriguing stills from it showing some pretty nifty-looking Nazi zombies in a bleak snowy wilderness. Sadly, the movie itself is atrocious. It wastes its nifty setting and concept and settles for a bunch of silly splatter scenes. The characters are bland and forgettable. And you never find out exactly WHY there are Nazi zombies in the snow -- they're just there. (There IS a half-assed attempt to explain it in some awkward exposition from a throwaway character, at one point, but it doesn't really work.)
"Dead Snow" also suffers from one of my pet peeves in these kinds of movies, and that is giving characters special abilities so they will LOOK REALLY COOL!!! in a couple of scenes, but then those characteristics are conveniently forgotten later on when they might interfere with the poorly-thought-out storytelling. In this case, you see in several quick scenes early on that these Nazi zombies are superfast -- they are almost blurs as they zip past the camera. But later on, the young campers who are menaced by the Nazi zombies are able to outrun them. It makes no sense.
Of the three, I'd say that "Pontypool" is the only one really worth the time. -- PL
