Posted By John Sears on April 28, 2011
On September 11th, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacked the United States. With the tragic recent release of ‘Zombies of Mass Destruction’ and the concurrent death of all American culture, they finally won.
Too much like ‘The Onion’? Ok, fair enough, a more conventional ZRC Review follows.
Before we get down to it though, you can watch a behind the scenes interview about this, ahem, movie here at FearNET. I won’t embed it because their player is super annoying and will start itself on its own, with sound, which is a huge no-no.
So what is ‘Zombies of Mass Destruction’ about? Well, Director Kevin Hamedani bills it in as a horror-comedy-political satire, and to some extent that’s true: it’s horrifying, it attempts to be funny, and it’s overtly, clumsily political. Satire, however, would be extending far too much credit.
From the first scene, ‘Zombies of Mass Destruction’ hits you over the head with stereotypes and ineptly constructed gross-out horror/humor. Ever wanted to watch a blind guy mistake a Zombie for the rotting carcass of a whale? Brother, you’re in luck.
Moving ahead from that auspicious beginning we’re introduced to an entire town’s worth of cardboard cut-outs who are so annoying that you can’t even enjoy their gruesome deaths. You have the ignorant white redneck family who are so gobsmackingly, over-the-top insensitive that even as a fervent critic of mainstream culture I started to feel like the movie was kicking an admittedly stupid puppy. You have the immigrant family with the religious and conservative father in an intergenerational conflict with his American-born daughter over who she dates and how she dresses (hint: not traditionally enough). You have a bad stoner musician who writes terrible songs. The movie also gives us a gay couple obeying the Will and Grace formula which mandates that gay men always be represented as either repressed, neurotic straight men (in the comedic sense) or flamboyant, sarcastic jerks. Rounding it out, ZMD has the sad-sack, liberal do-gooder teacher, a conservative glad-hander mayor and a fire and brimstone evangelical preacher.
There is not one ounce of original characterization in this entire movie. Not one. Tragically, some of these idiots survive to the end credits too.
(Gay couple goes home so the Will-type can come out to his conservative Mom, who lives in an actual, red white and blue house. This drove me to the fridge for tequila)
The Zombie Apocalypse, our old foe, begins in the tiny island community that these people are either citizens of or visitors to, for reasons that are never explained in any way whatsoever. Eventually, several disparate groups of survivors come to the conclusion that their particular boogeyman is responsible; an Osama Bin Laden type international terrorist, a sleeper cell made up of the aforementioned Iranian-American family, sinners, take your pick. This leads to zany antics as various unconvincing actors portraying what Hamedani thinks a right-winger looks like torture captive Living people and ignore the imminent threat of the actual ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ outside their doors.
It should be noted that, since no actual explanation for the ‘Apocalypse’ is given, these supposedly misguided individuals could be correct. Maybe the Iranian daughter really was part of a sleeper cell, or God really was judging the gays. I mean, there’s talk of a ‘Zombie virus’, but once again, as numerous medical experts pointed out in the days following the ’28 Days Later’ release, diseases just don’t work this way. The divine judgment explanation is actually the most plausible of the various theories on offer by the astoundingly dumb citizens of this island town. It’s just wrong, because.. well, we’re not told why, but aren’t those doddering old churchgoers funny?
If I had a desk, I’d be hitting my head on it now. Show, don’t tell, they say about fiction, but neither showing nor telling the facts necessary for your argument/conclusion? That’s hackery.
As you might expect from a movie utterly lacking in creativity, the ‘Zombies’ are depicted as savage, bestial gluttons feasting unintelligently on their fellow man, and when they aren’t used for cheap jump scares they’re the butt of stupid jokes, often, again, involving inept gross-out humor.
Want to watch a Zombie eat her own eyeball? Want to watch someone’s face get ripped off like a cartoon character, blinking afterward? Again, you’re in the right place with ‘Zombies of Mass Destruction’.
(Coincidentally, this is also what you’ll feel like after seeing ‘Zombies of Mass Destruction’)
The crassness of this movie is almost impossible to overstate. They run a little girl over with a car for a joke. Then they shoot her, or a similar Zombified girl, in the head for another attempt at a laugh.
(Poor Living AND Zombie girl(s))
The violence on display is appalling and shocking to the conscience. Torture is used, first for humor, then as a serious wrong, then as source of humor again, throwing any internal sense of morality the film might have been going for right out the window. The lack of sympathy for the Undead, who are repeatedly and bizarrely brutalized, is matched only by that missing toward its unfortunate audience.
(Sorry, but Jesus was too a Zombie. Zombies can love people as well)
A final note must be made about ZMD as political satire: this is awful stuff that fails on every level as a satire of politics in the War on Terror. Almost 90 straight minutes of hamfisted stereotyping to teach us what? It’s ok to be gay? Don’t racially profile everyone with olive or brownish skin? Seriously? ‘That’s My Bush’ was both funnier and far more nuanced and intelligent about skewering its intended targets, and believe me and the other twelve people who ever saw it, that’s quite a statement.
Run, don’t walk, away from any screening or showing of ‘Zombies of Mass Destruction’. It is hateful toward the Differently Animated, gruesomely violent and anti-social, muddled, confusing, blunt and thoroughly unfunny on all levels.
(See, it’s hilarious because there was a movie with a similar name!)
As a result, ‘Zombies of Mass Destruction’ receives our lowest rating and most stinging rebuke, designating that it is Living Supremacist.
If for some reason you do have to watch this movie, by all that’s holy, please take the proper precautions and have the necessary brain-numbing anesthetic on hand, as I did:
Our screenshot gallery from the movie is available here.
Category: Zombie Media |
No Comments »
Tags: Movies, ZRC Reviews
