Zombies of Mass Destruction comes in at sixth out of eight in my ranking of this year’s Horrorfest.
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In this horror comedy, the residents of and visitors to a small conservative island in Washington state are forced to deal with an outbreak of zombie-ism as social outcasts in the town are blamed for its occurrence.
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Inhabitants of a small island start turning into contagious zombies. Among our heroes are a gay couple who have come to the island for one of the pair to come out to his mother; a young, fully Americanized woman of Iranian descent who faces ostracism in the community; an overweight and bumbling teen who has a crush on the young woman; and a liberal hippy type who is running for mayor against the long-entrenched conservative.
When the zombie infection begins, the residents seem unaware that anything is wrong in their town, studiously failing to notice the change in their neighbors. The couple at the mother’s house see her becoming a zombie in front of their eyes, but believe the reaction is due to the information that her son is gay. When it reaches critical mass, people start being bitten and eaten in the streets. The gay couple and the woman running for mayor hide out in a conservative church with the church’s pastor, the congregants assembled for bingo night, and the conservative mayor. The young woman is taken captive by the redneck father of the teen, who ties her up and, in a light-hearted comedy romp, begins to torture her to find out what she knows about an Iraqi [sic] plot to overtake the island, as the woman tries to show the man that his wife (the teen’s mother) has become a zombie already. Meanwhile, at the church, the pastor tries to “rehabilitate” the gay men by use of a series of films.
Eventually all escape, emergency medical teams arrive, and the zombie infestation is stopped. After a cut to “29 Weeks Later”, the gay men invite the young Iranian woman to return with them to Manhattan, which she refuses, having decided to take over her (late, due to the zombies) father’s restaurant. The liberal woman has become an arch-conservative, is elected mayor, and insists that a DHS presence be established on the island.
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Yeah. It tries. Hard. Really hard. And at its best it is quite amusing, with several laugh-out-loud moments. But the genre of comedy zombie movies is throughly saturated, with the top tier including Braindead and Zombieland, and the second tier Shaun of the Dead and Black Sheep. And, at the highest, this film is third tier.
The message of the film is a bit lost on me: strongly pro-liberal throughout, I was confused by the flight to conservatism by multiple characters at the end. I wasn’t sure if this were being promoted, or simply observed, and if the latter, whether or not this were believable.
In a weaker year this movie would fare better in my ranking, but this is a very good year, and this comedic gore-fest falls mostly flat. I would give this one a pass.
Show/Hide bright spots
The film is, as noted, quite amusing in parts. The choice of gay-rehab videos, and the gay men’s bewildered response to them (“This is supposed to be homoerotic?”) is wonderful. The inquisition of the young woman of Iranian parents is very funny: the redneck asks her why there are 13 stripes on the US flag. When she answers correctly, he takes this as proof of her being foreign, as almost no high school-educated American would know the answer to this. Pretty Janette Armand, in her debut role, is very funny as the young woman. And the scene in which the couple fail to notice that the mother has turned into a zombie is at points hilarious.
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Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:49:10 +0000
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February 10th, 2010 at 17h01
I loved Zombieland, but in ranking it above Shaun of the Dead, you are wrong. Sometimes you’re right, but this time you’re wrong.
February 10th, 2010 at 17h12
They’re 0.1 stars apart at IMDB, FWIW, which is well within sampling error. Shaun of the Dead is great, but it’s the Bill Murray thing that puts Zombieland on the top for me. But nothing in Zombieland was anywhere near the Shaun bit about the location for a romantic dinner and the impenetrable fortress being the same location.
Also, I couldn’t take my eyes off Emma Stone, and I put disproportionate weight on such things:
February 16th, 2010 at 12h54
Zombie movies might be the one niche of horror where my knowledge is on par enough that I could manage a decent conversation with you (well, that and Lovecraft adaptations). My roommate could likely leave us both in the dust, but just living with him has been enough for me to pick up huge chunks of knowledge through osmosis.
Zombieland is a fun movie. I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I’m against it, because I certainly felt that I received my money’s worth from it. My only real objection is the assertion that it’s higher tier than Shaun of the Dead, or that Shaun is somehow second-tier at all.
This might be a controversial statement around these parts, but I claim without hyperbole that Shaun of the Dead does for the zombie film everything that Kill Bill did for every damn thing Tarantino watched in his youth. Namely, it dissects a genre that’s generally poorly considered in a way that’s both accessible to the standard audience member while still sneaking in enough shout-outs to the hardcore faithful to keep the experience interesting (I saw Shaun in a packed theatre, and I’m confident that I was the only one who laughed at Ed’s “We’re coming to get you, Barbara!” line). In fact, I’d argue that it should be no surprise that Tarantino provided commentary for Spaced, or that Wright, Pegg and Frost were brought in to make Don’t for Grindhouse; Tarantino and Wright seem to have similar levels of obsession and dedication to their source material in a way that translates beautifully on screen.
Also, the twin tracking shots where Shaun visits the convenience store before and after the zombie infection rank as my third favorite in all of film (I’m a sucker for a good tracking shot, and I believe that only Children of Men and Touch of Evil have ever done them better).
It’s pretty clear that the cast and crew of both films had a blast. It comes through on screen, and it really makes both movies more enjoyable for the audience. For me, though, Zombieland feels more essentially Hollywood than essentially zombie. I don’t know if there’s a particular word to describe the feeling, but it basically feels to me that the zombies were interchangable with whatever antagonist was hot at the time; if the film had been made in the 90s, they would have fought dinosaurs; in the 80s, they would have fought ninjas.
Final Note: Running zombies are rubbish. The day that we accepted our first running zombie, we took our first fateful step towards vampires that sparkle in sunlight.