Zombie Room

(Photo by Marko Saari | mrksaari on Flickr | Check out the full Dead Snow Zombiewalk Set)

It’s 8 p.m., and we are standing in front of the Helsinki Railway Station, dressed up in black leather and dripping blood, freezing our asses off. The very first snowflakes of the winter are dropping slowly from the pitch black sky. It’s the beginning of a Dead Snow zombiewalk, we set up to celebrate the first and second-to-last-ever Dead Snow screening in Helsinki. Shit it’s cold.

To be honest, nobody came. Well, not “nobody”, there was five of us, but compared to 100+ -zombiewalks they’ve had in Helsinki before, it’s close to nothing. But who the hell cares, at least the five of us are here, plus a small audience.

(Photo by Marko Saari | mrksaari on Flickr | Check out the full Dead Snow Zombiewalk Set)

So we turn into zombies and creep our way through the city to the film theater where the screening is at. The house is packed – sold out, to be exact. And Stig Frode Henriksen, one of the screenwriters and main actors of the film is on stage, opening up the show. He invites all the zombies to stage, and the audience gets to vote the best zombie.

That’s me. Nazis win.

(Photo by Miika Ullakko)

But then again, there’s just five of us, so we all get cool prices – DVDs, posters and whatnot.

But I get the main price – a very unique and special bottle of beer called Herzog. Branded and bottled for Dead Snow, and as far as I know, the only existing bottle of it. If you know otherwise, don’t tell me, or you crush my world.

The screening is an absolute success. I mean, what more could you ask – a fully packed theater, great film, people laughing, clapping, cheering and enjoying the film, and they even have a possibility to shake hands with one of the creators. Really, it’s an experience. And that’s what we’re looking when we go to film theaters, nowadays. We want to experience the film.

Francis Ford Coppola was just recently talking about something like this: that film theater experiences becomes more of an event in the future, in order for them to compete against piracy, home theaters and retarded distribution – not to mention other millions of things that are stealing people’s attention nowadays.

“I think the cinema is going to live off into something more related to a live performance in which the filmmaker is there, like the conductor of an opera used to be,” Coppola says. “Cinema can be interactive, every night it can be a little different.”

The article is quite interesting, have a read.

The evening ended with 25-year Anniversary Screening of Yön saalistajat, a legendary Finnish filmmaker Visa Mäkinen finnploitation feature. Gotta say, either I’m not born with the exploitation gene in me, or I just haven’t seen too much of good stuff from the genre, but I just didn’t get the film. There was one thing, though, that I got really excited about – the bad guy, Reuna (Matti Mäntylä). His performance was quite strange in Heath Ledger’s Joker-ish way, and I wouldn’t mind if the character was to re-emerge in some form on Finnish screens in the future.

A remake of Yön saalistajat? Aleksi Mäkelä, you reading this?

There’s going to be another screening of Dead Snow during the Night Visions -festival, so if you missed the first one, but are around in Helsinki – don’t miss this. Honestly, I haven’t seen a theaterful of Finnish filmgoers go so crazy over a film in ages. It’s really worth it, like a 12-pack of ice cold beer in a very good company. With Nazis. You can buy the tickets from here.

Can’t go wrong.

Ps. Special thanks to both the people of Night Visions and Helsinki Zombiewalk for helping us pulling this zombie walk stunt together! Too bad not too many zombies showed up, but at least we were one damn devoted bunch! Thanks, and be seeing you guys in the future Helsinki Zombiewalks!