Summary: Dark, twisted, gory and unrepentent, ‘A Cadaver Christmas’ is like a modern, drunken, somewhat overlong ‘Evil Dead’ set at a Community college. Zombies are very badly mistreated.

Rated Living Supremacist.

There are a lot of different kinds of Anti-Zombie movie (unfortunately). You have your Romero-esque social commentaries, your ‘Shaun of the Dead’-ish black comedies, your Euro-zom movies where Zombie-Demon-Ghost-Things menace you because of an obscure passage in Genesis or a wrong committed against the Knights Templar.

Oddly enough given its prominence and indie cred you don’t see nearly as many Zombie movies that remind you of the ‘Evil Dead’ series. Well look no further, ‘A Cadaver Christmas’, which we saw recently at Chicago Fear Fest, fits the bill.

Let’s see. A small band of colorful idiots fending off Undead (and Living people arguably converted into Quasi-Undead) in a remote location on holiday? Check. Journals of doom? Check. Science gone horribly awry? Check. Deadpan narcissist main character whose primary reaction to stress is overwhelming violence with improvised weaponry?

Big check.

Which is not to say ‘A Cadaver Christmas’ is a ripoff; far from it. Not every movie has bug-eyed (but probably blameless) Zombies being mown down by a lunatic member of the custodial staff, certainly nothing by Raimi. This isn’t a redeeming feature for the ZRC of course.

‘A Cadaver Christmas’ has a plot, but what you really need to know is that the dour Janitor (his only name for most of the film) is fending off an ever-growing horde of innocent Zombies, mostly with cleaning implements, while a drunkard, a bar owner an inept cop and a goat… ‘lover’… follow him around and generally get in the way. Zaniness ensues, as does persecution of Zombies.

In fact, in all honesty, the persecution of Zombies goes on a bit too long even from a mainstream perspective. The ZRC outrage began to fade a bit into ennui at some points; maybe I was rage-saturated after a long film festival, who knows.

Still, the question has to be asked: why can’t Zombies go to college too? Hmm, ‘A Cadaver Christmas’? Apparently it’s because some people still think the Undead are just a ‘mess’ to clean up.

For shame. ‘A Cadaver Christmas’ is rated Living Supremacist.

Tags: Movies, Public Appearance, Social Justice, ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Thursday, April 26th, 2012 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Zombie Media, ZRC News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.