I found
another new horror movie that I really dig. Seriously this might go into my
already crowded October rotation! It is a unique take on the monster genre with
some well-placed humor tossed into the mix for fun. The fact that it also pokes
just a bit of fun at the recent love affair with angst ridden teenage vampires
is an added bonus. I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’m sure
many of you would agree with me that High School sucked. Popular kids’ vs the
rest of us was hard enough. Now imagine if your town and school also had the
added issues of vampires and zombies. Petra is a pretty girl that gets bitten
by a snotty vampire jerk. He says he loves her but you know how that ends. Dag
is human, but his parents are an embarrassment. Plus, they keep wanting to talk
about the changes that he should expect his body to go thru at this point in
his life. That is a discussion that no teenage boy wants to have with his Mom!
Ned is a very smart kid that is completely ignored by his father in favor of an
athletic older brother. It gets so bad for him that he purposely gets bitten by
a zombie so he can feel no pain and ignore the world. So yeah High School
Drama.
Things go
completely sideways when an Aliens show up and slap a force field around the
town. Why are they in town? Well the vampires think it is a conspiracy against
them and the humans think the same. The zombies… well they missed their
shipment of brains. All hell breaks loose as we get zombies vs humans vs
vampires! This pits Ned, Dag, and Petra against one another, though that
doesn’t last. A few twists and turns later and the three have bonded over
fighting the alien menace.
I don’t
want to give anything away so I’m stopping there. Many movies try to walk that
tightrope between horror and comedy, mostly failing. Freaks of Nature is that
rare movie that manages it nicely. Vampires explode, zombies lose their heads,
humans get drained, and brains get eaten. All on screen and in some cases very
funny. The neighbor that won’t die and gives a play by play of the zombies
eating him is a great touch. But it isn’t all laughs. The vampire jerk that
bites and then dumps Petra is kind of scary. I mean he blithely tosses her
around and holds a grudge. After what he did when she disses him later he kind
of goes overboard when given the chance. Though that doesn’t end well for him!
The
special effects work is CGI heavy, especially with the aliens. But we get some
nice looking practical work on the zombies and vampires. Plus, some of the
kills are on screen and clearly latex. That made me very happy. I can forgive
the occasional digital assist with blood splatter and vampire explosions since
the rest of the work is so good. The CGI on the aliens didn’t bother me as much
either. They are aliens so the fact they look a bit strange sort of fits.
I could
keep going on but that would be pointless. This is a great movie that you
should check out. I’ve watched it a couple times now and it holds up well on
repeated viewings. I recommend Freaks of Nature. New Horror Rules! Well not
really… but all of it doesn’t suck.
© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer
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