The Walking Dead, ahh, yes. Cultural phenomenon, to be sure. But, and this almost goes without saying by this point, rabidly, and unredeemably, Living Supremacist.

It’s also a show that is more than a little ripe for a satirical skewering, so The Zombie Rights Campaign was interested to learn of ‘The Walking Deceased’, a parody movie (now available on Netflix streaming).

First off, however, ‘The Walking Deceased’, while primarily poking some well-deserved fun at ‘The Walking Dead’, also takes jabs at everything from ‘Zombieland’ to ‘Warm Bodies’ and ‘Shaun of the Dead’, with smaller nods to various games, movies and other artifacts of the Zombie Industrial Complex.

It’s occasionally riotously funny. It’s also more than a little slow in places, and sometimes it runs its jokes into the ground.

The story is about what you might expect, if you’ve watched a lot of the previously mentioned Zombie media products. Sheriff Lincoln (the Rick Grimes analogue) wakes up in a hospital with some fairly obvious mental difficulties due to his prolonged coma (a popular fan theory for Actual Rick Grimes’ erratic and violent behavior). He quickly runs into refugee survivor characters from Zombieland, but sets off in search of his son, Chris, who the coma renders him unable to call anything but ‘Carl’.

Or rather, in true Walking Dead fashion, ‘Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhrl’.

From there it’s a series of failed rescues and comically inept survivorship attempts until the end credits. Malls will be abandoned, farms will be improperly defended, and on the whole, you’ll find yourself largely agreeing with Warm Bodies-esque Zombie ‘Romeo’ about the sad state of the Living human community.

Highlights include Chris/Carl, Romeo’s inner monologues, and the many, many 4th-wall cracking jokes at the various bizarre coincidences and logical gaps in The Walking Dead. If you’ve ever wondered why Walker skulls are ‘newborn baby soft’, then this might be the satire for you. If you haven’t watched/slogged through a lot of Zombie fiction, however, the jokes are going to have a lot less resonance.

A tougher question for the ZRC was, however, the rating to assign to this film. A lot of Zombies are needlessly killed, of course. But is that because THIS film is Living Supremacist, or because its source materials are?

In the end, we choose to believe, especially given Romeo’s inclusion, that this is a more tolerant understanding of the Differently Animated. The Zombie Rights Campaign therefore gives it a ‘Zombie Neutral’ rating.

Tags: ZRC Reviews

This entry was posted by John Sears on Thursday, July 23rd, 2015 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. 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.