Time for
another low budget zombie movie. I thought that I would double down and watch
one that was also a comedy. As if making a low budget zombie movie wasn’t
fraught with enough pitfalls these guys decided to make a comedic one. Well
what the hell might as well dive in.
Franklin
and Mike end up in the middle of a zombie outbreak after Mike shows up kills
Franklin’s zombie son before he can bite him. The pair decide to head to Mike’s
cousin Peanut’s house because he is always got a lot of guns. Along the way
they pick up some neighbors, lose some of them to zombies, and do a lot of
silly stuff in the name of comedy. Eventually they also run into a military man
and the rescue team that was sent to find the cure and get it out. See Mike
works at the lab where the virus got loose and is responsible for the zombie
outbreak! Much goofiness ensues.
It might
seem that I’m making light of the plot with such a barebones synopsis, but I’m
really not. There isn’t a whole lot going on in this movie other than a group
of survivors running from one scene to another. The movie plays like a sequence
of skits tied very loosely together, which is common in ultra-low budget horror
flicks like this. Normally that annoys me but here not so much. While I noticed
that was happening there always seemed to be something funny happening on
screen. Where this was weak in scares and zombie action it more than made up
for in comedy. Let me give a couple of examples.
First up
is Peanut. The actor playing him is hilarious. You have a stoned gangster who
never quite understands that there are zombies. He keeps referring to them as
crackheads. There are a couple gags that stand out like him loaning his car to
another survivor to go get a pizza and another where he has a pocket full of
grenades. Both of these lead to some really funny dialogue that had me
laughing. In spite of being barely aware of his environment he keeps surviving,
which is also a funny running gag.
Second is
the mentally handicapped character that Mike and Franklin meet up with. They
immediately assume that he is a zombie and attack him, only for everyone to
yell at them. This gives us the line, “He’s not a zombie he’s a retard!”. The
fact that this keeps happening and that he runs
around wearing a helmet and
cape made out of a blanket is great. Oh, he also grabs Peanut’s gun when no one
else realizes that a woman has turned and shoots her, then claps and smiles.
Why is that funny? I don’t know but it is. Toss in a “Samuel L. Jackson”
moment, funny dialogue, an illegitimate baby, and clever dialogue for what ends
up being an amusing movie.
 |
| Generic zombies... |
There are
some issues with Not Another Zombie Movie that I have to point out. This was a
low budget production that was made for around 15k dollars. So many of the
zombies are generic, they try and fail to do some CGI explosions, also green
screen was a bad idea, and God damn it what is with the digital blood! I also
questioned why they used one particular actor that kept pausing and looking at
his phone for the next line. The rest of the cast was much better than this and
it was irritating every time he popped on screen.
Still I
have to say that I enjoyed this movie. This was very ambitious, and they
succeeded more than they failed. It isn’t a perfect but worth checking out if
you like independent movies like I do. With that caveat consider this a
recommendation.
© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer
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