Horror Film Review

Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009): Zombie flick! Er, I guess that's obvious. This is one of the Afterdark Horrorfest films, which should immediately give you pause. They don't have a great track record. But this entry...well, it's not god-awful, I will say that.

A body washes up on the beach of an island. On this island is a small, somewhat Leave It To Beaver-esque town. A blind man pokes the corpse with his cane and we're off to the races. Eventually. You see, this is one of the slowest starting zombie movies I've ever seen. The time's wasted on character establishment. There's an Iranian-American college girl who is at odds with her traditionalist father. There's a mayor running for re-election against a local teacher. There's a gay couple going home to one of their mothers' house to come out of the closet. And there's a fundamentalist preacher who, of course, thinks Armageddon is nigh. Sound interesting? It's not.

I've never understood what people mean by "stilted" acting. I know now. The worst actor of the lot, though, is the first to become snack food, and holy crap is it memorable. Later, in the house of the gay man's mom, there's a scene that actually made me a little nauseous. The ability for a movie to do that to me is impressive. Luckily, ZMD doesn't take itself too seriously so you don't have to either. What did bother me, though, was that the filmmakers tried cramming in all kinds of socio-political themes: Muslim extremists/terrorism, gun control, racism, homosexual reversal therapy (I'm not kidding), and religious fanaticism. If you ignore all this, you'll be fine.

Breakdown

Acting:  Stilted but marginally acceptable.
Story:  Irrelevant given it's a zombie flick.
Direction:  A little clunky but the job got done.
Production Values: Better than I expected.
Gore:  Oh my goodness, yes. Not since Automaton Transfusion have I seen such creative nastiness. Ending:  A surprising snore considering the build up.
Verdict:  Should you watch it? If you like B-grade zombie movies, it's worth a look. If you do, a word of warning: eat after the show.

Rating:  2 out of 5