Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

Have you ever found yourself watching Superbad and thinking, "I wish there was a less well-written version of this with zombies and more annoying characters,"?  Then this movie is for you!

That sounds harsher than I mean it to.  I apologize to the scouts and their stripper friend.  Let's break it down.

Ben, Carter and Augie are sophomores in high school.  They are Boy Scouts.  Augie loves being a scout.  Ben and Carter are planning on quitting - because being a Boy Scout is super lame, you guys - but don't want to hurt Augie's feelings.  

The three of them are going on an overnight scout trip with Scout Leader Rodgers (a Dolly Parton-loving David Koechner) when Ben and Carter are invited to a super-secret high school party by Kendall's (Carter's hot sister, who Ben has a very obvious crush on) boyfriend.  But it's the same night as the camp-out!  What are these scouts going to do?

They're going to ditch Augie after he goes to sleep and go to the party, because that sounds like a plan that will go very well.  Somewhere along the line, they meet up with Denise, a former high school dropout who now works at a local strip club.

Pretty standard high school sex comedy stuff, really.  Until the zombies show up.
We see the outbreak at the beginning of the movie.  They are being studied at some local sciency place, which allows burnout janitors to just dance right into the zombie zone.  It seemed like they probably could have secured the area a little better, but that's just me being cautious, I guess.

At this point, Ben, Carter, Augie (who joins up with them after having some adventures by himself) and Denise are still trying to get to the party.  Not because they want to hook up with seniors (they do, though), but because they want to save everyone there from the zombies.  Also, the military is planning on wiping out the entire city to stop the zombie spread (as seen in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, The Crazies, Return of the Living Dead and many, many more). 

I just used a whole lot of words on a pretty simplistic plot.  I apologize.  I could have just said, "high school boys attempt to procure alcohol and bang girls way out of their league, also zombies."  Or, to kind of repeat myself from earlier, "Superbad: Rave To The Grave," complete with one of the characters (Carter) trying to be a skinny Jonah Hill in the worst way.  Anyway, let's get to some thoughts.

It was fine.  Carter's whole "Jonah Hill in Superbad," act got old really quick, and I didn't really care for bland Ben, but I really liked Augie and Denise.  I liked Augie because he wasn't ashamed of who he was (he also created the best weapon when it came to killin' time) and Denise because, underneath her gruff demeanor, was actually quite sweet.  Her and Ben formed a weird little friendship that I genuinely enjoyed watching.  She treated Carter like garbage, because he was a jackass and needed to be put in his place.  I liked that, because Carter deserves everything bad in this world.

Ultimately, we're talking about zombie comedy, so let's talk about the zombies.

It was unclear how they were going to play it.  The first zombies we see are typical Romero zombies.  We also see a zombie deer, so we know it can cross species.  

Also, cats.

Then we get to a scene early in the outbreak where our heroes are making a stand in a liquor store parking lot.  A horde of zombies are lurching towards them.  Suddenly, one of the zombies goes down on all fours and starts running at them like a flesh-eating ape.  Okay then.  We're dealing with Day of the Dead (remake) zombies.
We also find out that the zombies retain something of their pre-zombie memories, much like latter day Romero zombies (as first seen in the original Day of the Dead).  How do we find this out?  Why, the scouts sing "...Baby One More Time" to a zombie wearing a Britney Spears t-shirt, and the zombie attempts to sing along.  It's a highly scientific method.

"My loneliness is killing meeeeee..."

There is some decent gore, especially when the scouts "weapon up" and hit the party.  They created a bunch of zombie-killing weapons from random hardware store items, because apparently they had all earned their Weapon Making merit badges.  Lots of death, destruction, mayhem, etc.

If you like the image of someone using a zombie penis as a handle, only to tear that handle off and send it flying through the air, there is also a scene like that.  There is also a scene where someone takes a selfie with a pair of zombie boobs.  I did not care for those scenes.

I can't say I enjoyed this movie all the way through, but there were enough funny/bloody moments to keep me entertained.  There's something I had to keep in mind as I was watching this: I am 35 years old.  This movie was not really made with the "approaching middle-age man" in mind.  If I was in high school or college, I'm sure I would find this movie hilarious.  It's a bit of dumb fun with crude jokes, lots of gore and a little nudity.  It's fast-moving enough to make it easy to overlook its flaws.
Although, honestly, if you switch out Carter for a character who is less obnoxious, I'm sure I would have enjoyed this more than I did.  As it stands, this was a fun movie that I will probably never watch again.  If I do, it'll probably be on mute, in the background of a party.  

Who am I kidding?  I don't have parties.  I apologize for lying to you all.

Rating: 3/5

The Final Girls

I’m a sucker for a typical horror movie told from a different perspective.  Scream, Cabin in the Woods and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon are a few of the more popular movies in this genre, but The Final Girls tends to lean more towards Midnight Movie or Camp Daze (aka Camp Slaughter) than those other options.

Let’s set this up: Max’s mother (Amanda) had a small role in an 80s slasher movie called Camp Bloodbath (it was basically Friday the 13th, much like Midnight Movie’s movie-within-a-movie was basically Texas Chain Saw Massacre).  Twenty-to-thirty years later, she was still trying to make it as an actress, but was hamstrung by her appearance in this campy horror film.  On her way back from yet another audition she likely wouldn't get the part for, she and Max get in a car accident and Amanda dies.

Three years later, Max is still dealing with her mother’s death.  The school she is attending is showing Camp Bloodbath on the big screen and Max is pressured into making an appearance.  During the movie, a fire breaks out in the theater, and Max – along with a handful of her friends – find the only escape is by cutting through the screen and going through a door in the back.  By doing this, they somehow find themselves having been pulled into the movie.  When Max comes across her mother, she is not actually Amanda; she is Nancy, her character in Camp Bloodbath.  Duncan – the movie geek – proclaims that they shouldn’t mess with the events of the movie, but to let everything play out exactly like it’s supposed to.  “Don’t think of them as people,” he says.  “Think of them as animals in a nature preserve.”  Of course, they find that is not necessarily the case.  (Duncan naturally knows all the lines in the movie, so he gleefully quotes lines these characters are saying in front of him and gets giddy at the prospect of their impending death.)

Since our characters are inside the movie, there is a lot of playing around with movie conventions (my personal favorite is the flashback scene).  There are a lot of laughs, as people from the modern age are forced to interact with horror movie stereotypes from the 80s (the conversations between Chris and Kurt absolutely killed me). 

But what really drew me in was the surprisingly strong emotional core.  Throughout the film, we see how the death of Amanda has absolutely devastated Max.  Now, Max has another chance to spend time with her mother (even though Nancy is not technically her mother; rather she is the character that her mother played in Camp Bloodbath).  From the scenes we saw of Max and Amanda, it seems like Max was the responsible one in that relationship.  That carries over here, but we also get a chance to see Nancy play a bit of a motherly role for Max.  It's remarkably sweet and heartbreaking.  Taissa Farmiga and Malin Akerman played their roles perfectly.  It never felt forced or manipulative.  It felt real.

The writing was great and the entire cast was tremendous.  With the exception of a couple of the characters in Camp Bloodbath, all of the characters here felt real (and those characters only lacked depth because they were playing one-note stereotypes in an 80s slasher film).  There was a depth behind them that I wasn't expecting.  That helped some of the jokes to land, but it also helped me to feel more connected to them.  When they die - and most of the do die - I was sad.  We pulled back the curtain of slasher films and found that maybe we shouldn't root so hard for some of the unlikable characters to die; maybe they aren't as terrible as they appear to be at first blush.

I had a few issues with this, but all of those issues are minimal compared to what I loved about it.  This movie was smart, hysterical and more emotional than I would have thought.

Rating: 5/5

Notable actors: Malin Akerman, Taissa Farmiga, Nina Dobrev, Thomas Middleditch, Alia Shawkat, Adam DeVine

Mini Review: Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead

I will talk to anyone and everyone about the extent of my love for the first Dead Snow.  It's a little slow out of the gate, but it eventually delivers the full-fledged insanity I hoped that it would, while still developing characters I wanted to spend some time with.  It's one of my favorite zombie movies of the past 5 years.  What Tommy Wirkola was able to do on a small budget (roughly $800K) is nothing short of extraordinary.

As I mentioned in my Trailer Talk post, I was very much looking forward to the sequel.  Seeing as how Wirkola's Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters made $225 million on a $50 million budget, he was given a little more money to play with this time around.  It's tough to find exact numbers, but it looks like this film had a budget of around $5.5 million.

As near as I can tell, Wirkola took that money and immediately asked himself, "How can I make this movie crazier than the first?"  The answer, of course, was more.  More characters.  More zombies.  More fights.  More intestines.  More blood.  More deaths.  More weapons.  More laughs.  More insanity.

Daniel (Martin Starr), Blake (Ingrid Haas) and the Star Wars obsessed Monica (Jocelyn DeBoer) - self-appointed members of the Zombie Squad - travel from America to Norway to help Martin Hykkerud (the only survivor of the original) with his Nazi zombie problem.  "We've seen thousands of zombie movies," Daniel proclaims, as if this is enough information for Martin to have complete faith in their zombie-killing acumen.  Martin doesn't seem overly convinced, but put a hammer/shovel/hatchet in their hands, and they're more than willing to prove their worth.  Not to mention the fact that Blake has one of the all-time best zombie killing faces.

Martin had cut off his arm in the previous movie after being bitten.  In a case of mistaken identity (armdentity?), doctors attached a super-strength Nazi zombie arm to Martin.  At first, he found himself at war with it in a way that conjured up memories of Ash.  Eventually he learned to control it and found that he could bring the dead back to life.  Herzog - the leader of the Nazi zombies - has the same ability.  And so, as the trailer shows, we are treated to a massive zombie war: Herzog's zombies vs. Martin's zombies.  It's the kind of scene Wirkola didn't have money to do in the first film, and he's clearly holding nothing back here.  It's terrific.

The Evil Dead remake was a tense, nasty film, but it was clear the filmmakers were having fun as they dumped buckets of blood on the set.  That same feeling of glee is present here, only the events on the screen are much more comical.  Wirkola clearly had a lot of fun trying to think of new ways to kill people, or new ways to use their intestines.  With every new trick, I found myself grinning like an idiot.  I'm sure he was doing the same thing.

There's too much insanity to properly describe here.  If you like buckets of blood, miles of intestines and aren't easily offended, you need to watch this as soon as you can.  Even if you don't like zombie films, you're still likely to enjoy this one.

Rating: 5/5

Added note: I loved the chemistry between Martin and Roy (Stig Frode Henriksen) in the first film, so I was really happy to see Henriksen show up in this one as a different character.

Severance

A terrific British horror-comedy.  It sets a slasher film during a staff retreat.  On top of hitting all the familiar slasher beats, there is also a healthy amount of gore involved.  Lots of blood.  Some terrible carving.  But it injects a perfect amount of humor to the mix.

The World's End

Description from Netflix:

Twenty years after attempting a marathon pub crawl, a group of friends reunited to give it another shot.  Their ultimate destination is the World’s End pub, whose name turns out to be rather literal.

Notable actors:

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Smiley, David Bradley, Rosamund Pike, Mark Heap, Bill Nighy, Peter Serafinowicz, and many, many more.  This movie became an exercise in “name that actor from previous Edgar Wright productions”.  “Look, it’s Duane Benzie.  Look, it’s ‘the other Andy’.  Tyres!  Brian!”  And so on.

My thoughts:

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Edgar Wright.  Beyond my love of the first two installments in the Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), I also love Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Spaced.  I’ve seen each of the movies at least five times, and have gone through the entire series of Spaced at least three times.   I might be in love with him.  I’ve made my peace with that.

This one had a different feel to it.  It had the same message as Shaun of the Dead (trying to grow up and leave childish things behind), but with a more somber tone.  Shaun was a slacker.  Gary is an alcoholic.  Shaun’s attempts at trying to save the lives of his loved ones were heartwarming.  Gary’s attempts at trying to save his loved ones were selfish. And so on.

There were serious moments in the previous two films, but nothing like what we saw here.  I’m hesitant to say much more than that, lest I mention any minor spoilers.  There were quite a few genuinely heartbreaking moments here.  And, while the previous films had some of these as well (the goodbye scene between Shaun and Ed in Shaun of the Dead always gets me), there were a greater number of them here, and they all hit home.

That’s not to say there weren’t jokes.  There were plenty of jokes.  But some of these jokes were different from the rest of the series.  Where the other two movies had a lot of quick-hitting jokes that were set up well, this one seemed to go for easy humor, at least in the beginning.  Weird little jokes, like Gary calling a glass door a “windoor”. 

Since most of these jokes came from Gary (the one in a state of arrested development), I assume that they were in there to get pity laughs from the audience.  They were cheap jokes.  Obvious jokes.  And they were coming from a man-child who was obviously trying to relive his high school days.  I believe we weren’t supposed to find these jokes funny, but were there to help us connect to Gary on a deeper level.  We felt the same level of pity for him that his former friends did.  These jokes were as desperate as Gary.  If that was indeed the reason for them, then Edgar Wright is brilliant.  (In case you wondered, I firmly believe this is the case.)

Still, the majority of my theater laughed pretty hard at most of these attempted jokes, so I thought that I was missing something.  Upon further review, I don’t believe that to be the case at all. 

One of the people in my theater nearly hyperventilated when a white-haired Cumberbatch appeared as Julian Assange is a trailer for The Fifth Estate, and later giggled maniacally when Martin Freeman showed up.  Other people started laughing when Gary told the others his mom died of “the big cancer” (someone actually repeated “cancer” loudly, then laughed heartily).  These were the people laughing at everything.  For the record, I love Sherlock, but I have a feeling that most of the people laughing haven’t seen many British TV shows/movies outside of Sherlock, so they assume that every single line said in this movie was supposed to be a joke. 

"That door says 'Gents'.  HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Opening jokes aside, there really were a handful of terrific jokes in this film.  As is the case with the Cornetto Trilogy, a lot of the major laughs involved either extreme violence or extreme profanity, both of which I approve of.  The first really big laugh involved the first fight with a robot in a pub bathroom.  It was drunken and violent, and it ended with a decapitated teenager in a puddle of blue liquid.  And it killed me.

All of the fight scenes were terrific.  As the movie progressed and our heroes drank more, the fights got steadily sloppier.  It was obvious that a lot of thought was put into each fight.

After watching this, I found out that the stunt coordinator was also the stunt coordinator on Drunken Master, which makes perfect sense.

I loved the look of the robots.  They looked like normal people, but, when they charged to fight, they revealed bright blue lights from their mouths and eyes.  It was a great visual, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of the aliens in Attack the Block.

One of the things that ties the Cornetto Trilogy together are some recurring jokes.  Here are a handful of the jokes I saw here:

1. Cornetto.  Of course.  It makes a very late appearance here.

2. Jumping the fence.

3. The noise the bar game makes when it starts up.

4. Knocking over a “Stay off the grass” sign.

I’m sure there are more that I missed.  I guess that means I’ll just have to watch all of them again.  That’s a challenge I can meet.  I’m nothing if not thorough.

Overall, I really liked this.  It was a great take on the sci-fi/bodysnatcher genre.  I would rank it my third favorite in the trilogy, but that’s more due to the strength of the previous films than the weaknesses of this one.  I have a feeling this will get better the more I watch it.  I look forward to many repeated viewings once this makes it to DVD.

Rating: 5/5

A collection of cool posters:

 

Kill Me Now

Description from Netflix:

When nerds Dennis and Noah crash a party thrown by the local jocks and hot girls in a remote cabin, they must combat a brainy serial murderer known at the Driller Killer, who uses power tools to rid the world of idiots, one clueless teen at a time.

Notable actors: Michael Swaim, Katy Stoll, Katie Willert

I have long been a fan of Michael Swaim's (and Katy Stoll's, and Katie Willert's) work at Cracked.  So, when I heard Swaim was writing/directing a horror/comedy (and featuring Stoll & Willert in minor roles), I got kind of excited.  It premiered in a very limited release late last year, and was finally made available by VOD fairly recently.

By the time I was able to see it, I had lowered my expectations quite a bit.  I wondered how Swaim's humor - previously only seen in 5 minute intervals - would play for 90 minutes.  It was his first movie, and it was made for $90,000.  I've seen great movies by first time directors on a limited budget (Colin was made for about $150 and is one of my favorite modern zombie movies), but I've also seen a fair share of absolutely terrible movies fitting that same description.

My last concern had nothing to do with Swaim.  Horror comedies are tricky films to make.  A good one has to give a nod to the films that have inspired them, while making light of certain characters/plot inconsistencies.  The best ones change the way you watch horror movies.  A lot of others settle for easy jokes.  Others settle for being flat-out campy.  Others fail in every capacity and are just terrible.

While I wouldn't rank this among the best in that category (perhaps I'll put together a list of my favorite horror comedies at some point), it was still pretty good.  The humor held up surprisingly well for the duration of the movie.  The budget constraints were obvious from time to time, but it was never really a distraction.  I've seen plenty of movies made with higher budgets that looked a lot worse than this one did.  I liked the majority of the characters.  I thought the douchebag jocks would get on my nerves after a while, but they really didn't.  They were consistently amusing in their doofiness.

The villain was terrific.  This was actually one of my favorite parts of the movie: instead of creating an anonymous killer, they decided that the killer would be The Driller Killer.  The Driller Killer is an odd, grindhousey 1979 slasher.  In that film, the Driller Killer (real name, Reno Miller) was an artist who is slowly (or not-so-slowly, I guess) being driven insane by the rock band practicing in the apartment above him.  So, like any artist pressed to his limit would do, be began drilling bums to death with a battery-powered drill.

I saw The Driller Killer a few years ago, as it was in a pack of 50 movies (Chilling Classics, to be precise) I had received from my brother, and it had a catchy title (this is the same reason I watched Bucket of Blood and Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory.  I am not to be trusted with those movie packs).

Maybe it's just because I had already seen The Driller Killer, but the fact that they reused that killer made me endlessly happy.  After all, Reno was still alive at the end of The Driller Killer.  It only makes sense that he continued on with his killing ways.  You know the old saying, "Once you start killing bums with a drill, the only thing that can stop you is the steady rain of a thousand bullets." 

Still, judging by his murder method in The Driller Killer, I would've assumed he would've been caught/killed by now.  He wasn't overly cautious in his methods.  Oh well.  I'm certainly not here to nitpick continuity issues between The Driller Killer and Kill Me Now, or write Driller Killer fanfic that explains where he has been all this time.  (I might be here for that, but not in this post.  That story needs room to breathe.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  Quite a few big laughs (if you can work a solid Oscar Wilde joke into a horror movie, chances are I'll laugh).  Good characters.  A good collection of actors (even if it was obvious that a lot of them weren't highly trained actors, I still thought everyone did a great job).  This was a genuinely funny movie.  Glad to see Swaim venturing into the world of moviemaking.  I hope he ends up making another one.

My one complaint: could've used more Stoll, Willert, and Dan O'Brien.  You've been put on notice, Swaim.

This is currently available by VOD.  I rented it for $3.99 from Amazon, and am probably going to end up buying it at some point in the not-too-distant future.  If you have an extra $4, I highly recommend checking this out.  You’ll get a few laughs and support indie horror in one fell swoop.

Rating: 4/5

John Dies at the End

Description from Netflix:
Promising a trip that transcends time and space, a drug called Soy Sauce is sweeping the landscape - and quietly robbing users of their humanity.  Now, it's up to a couple of slackers to stop the psychotropic invasion before it's too late.

Notable actors: Paul Giamatti, Clancy Brown, Glynn Turman, Doug Jones

My thoughts:
This movie is a little strange.  I knew that going in.  I had read the book, and the description I came up with was, "Kind of goofy like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but much darker and with filthier humor."  That holds true for the movie, as well.

Dave is our narrator, and our guide through all the craziness that occurs throughout the course of this movie.  He and John have become fairly well-known as "spiritualist exorcists", or something like that.  A reporter comes to down to interview Dave about some of their exploits.  It is through this interview that we learn about the drug (street name "Soy Sauce") that got them in this situation to begin with.

As I mentioned, it's a pretty goofy movie, but it has an edge to it.  Some of the CG looks pretty cheesy (which is to be expected, as I know the budget wasn't huge), but, thankfully, they don't rely on it too much.  They focus more on the characters, and the effects the Soy Sauce has on them.  The immediate result of taking Soy Sauce takes the user out of space and time, but the aftereffects are different for each person.  Some are able to see things in this world that have been transported from an alternate dimension.  Some are overtaken by forces from that same alternate dimension.  These things are sinister, and want nothing more than to infiltrate the world.

One of my favorite things about this film (and book) is the world it takes place in.  It's a very unique and fully realized world.  And it looks tremendous here.  As I mentioned earlier, it's a darker world than I would've guessed, based on the extremely goofy vibe the film gives off.

The casting here is terrific.  Besides Paul Giamatti, there aren't any other huge names here.  The characters of John & Dave are played by Rob Mayes (who looks a bit like Liam Hemsworth) and Chase Williamson, respectively.  Amy is played by Fabianne Therese.  And they're all fantastic.  I couldn't have asked for a better cast.

After reading the book, I was excited to find that they were making a movie.  After seeing the trailer, I was less than enthused.  It's almost like they took the cheesiest, most CG heavy moments and put them in the trailer.  And the acting looks pretty terrible.
Thankfully, that is not the case.  Aside from the CG, the movie looks great, and the acting is terrific.

It's not for everyone.  Even for a horror-comedy, it's pretty strange.  But it's funny and creepy and kind of touching at times.  And it moves along at a pretty good clip.  At 99 minutes, it's not very long, and I was never bored.  If you're looking for something kind of fun and different, definitely give this one a shot.

It's slated for a January 25 theatrical release, but it's currently available to watch on VOD through the normal venues (Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, etc.).  It's $9.99, which is a pretty good deal.  Invite a few friends over and throw this one on.  You won't be disappointed.

Rating: 5/5

Red Band trailer below: