Images of world war ii in contemporary horror cinema: cultural codes

This article addresses the problem of contemporary European vision of the results of World War II through the prism of cinema, namely, a specific genre: horror. The images created in this genre by Norwegian and French directors are analyzed: Standartenführer, Germans, Soviet soldiers. The material is two relatively well-known films of the horror-comedy (black humor) subgenre («Operation "Dead Snow" (2009), «Operation "Dead Snow 2" (2014) (Norway) and the slasher «Underground Horror» (2022) (France, Belgium). The balance of power in these films, when the victory over zombies (German soldiers who have turned into the living dead) is won either by Europeans and Americans, or by representatives of national minorities, is, from the author's point of view, the code of modern culture in the West, when the role of Soviet troops in the Victory over fascism is hushed up, when gays or representatives of national minorities act as heroes; when the Second World War becomes the subject of a comedy comprehension with an admixture of trash. Such a code differs significantly from the one that existed in literature and cinema of the immediate post-war period (in the second half of the 20th century), when living witnesses (war participants) were more numerous and moral values were somewhat different. This prism of artistic vision of the Second World War is justified by the nature of postmodern thinking and the demand for this kind of film production among Western viewers.