The Zombie
marathon continues with this independent feature from Australia. I remember
there was some buzz surrounding this one because it was crowd funded. Not a fan
of what I like to call internet panhandling, but it worked for them. When it
popped up on Amazon Prime I decided to give it a try.
The
apocalypse has already started when the movie begins. Two telecommunications
workers, Joel and Darryl, meet up at a telephone exchange to wait things out.
The exchange is a solidly built and has doors that lock. They are eventually
joined by a co-worker named Roy and his daughter Emma. Some jokes are told and
we randomly get to see crowd shots of zombies. Mixed in are a couple of
paintball wielding guys that end up at the exchange, one a friend and the other
Emma’s boyfriend. A boyfriend that Roy doesn’t like! More jokes are told, one
of the characters explodes and the military gets eaten by zombies. Well not all
of them, but the two that show up do. They make a break for it and then things
sort of just wind down.
I don’t
like this movie, but I don’t dislike it either. It just is what it is. This is
meant to be a comedy so trying to be funny is okay. Some of the jokes are spot
on and made me laugh. The boyfriend that Roy doesn’t like is Asian and when he
says he wants to smack him one of the other characters chimes in, “You can’t
hit an Asian. It’s a hate crime.” I thought that was funny. There is also a bit
that keeps getting reused about doing some “Ninja shit” that I found amusing.
But many of the other attempts at humor missed the mark and I got the feeling
that it was a “toss shit at the wall and see what sticks” formula. Regardless
of situation every attempt at cracking a joke was taken. The best horror
comedies manage to be funny without disrupting the horror part of the story.
That isn’t the case here.
 |
| Some of the zombies look decent |
I didn’t
expect the practical effects work that we get here. The zombie designs are
pretty decent and there are actual guts being ripped out on set. Well not real
guts, but nice-looking rubber ones. Far too many new zombie movies do
everything with crappy CGI and that annoys me. But Me and My Mates makes some
attempts to give you old school blood and guts. There are also a couple zombie
kills that are fun, the best being the zombie who gets a screwdriver and then
shotgun to the head. The further we go into the movie the less practical and
the more CGI we get. Did we need to digitally see three headless zombies
spraying blood? Or the terrible explosion that would have looked bad on an old
video game? You did such a good job on the other stuff why ruin it?
In the
end, I can’t recommend Me and My Mates vs the Zombie Apocalypse. It has some
moments that work with the gore and humor, but misses too often to be worth a
watch. Not a bad movie just a mediocre one.
© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer
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