Posted: 09/02/2011

Zombie Apocalypse

(2008)

by Joe Sanders

Available on DVD on September 6th from Pacific Entertainment

Commence the slow applause for Zombie Apocalypse. Writer/Director/Producer/ Operator/Horror Genius Ryan Thompson delivers a tour de force of zombie killing delight in a film that proves you don’t need a budget, a decent script, or even a modicum of acting talent at your disposal to make one of the most important films to ever grace the screen.

Now, don’t let my tongue-in-cheek sarcasm drive you away from this too quickly. Zombie Apocalypse definitely has an audience. It exists for those of us who love nothing more than to get together with a group of our unsuspecting friends and rip this film apart à la Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Personally, I would have killed to be watching this with a certain involuntary astronaut and his two robot pals silhouetted in the lower right hand corner of my screen.

It’s obvious that Writer/Director Ryan Thompson is a huge fan of the zombie movie genre, and anytime a filmmaker has a commitment and passion for what he or she is doing, it’s going to show in the final product. Clearly, Thompson and his cast had a lot of fun making this film. However, this goes beyond low budget. It looks like something a group of high school students could just as easily make, as long as they saved their milk money for a few weeks. On top of their lack of an effects budget, Thompson is not a screenwriter. Just about every element of the script is awful. The characters are ill-conceived, and everyone in the film not only accepts the reality of the zombie apocalypse very quickly, they all know a lot about zombie physiology and how they work. It’s refreshing to a degree to not get all the typical exposition at the beginning of how to kill a zombie and so on, but here it feels too convenient that all the characters are on the same page.

The dialogue is pure banter, meaning that just about every line spoken does nothing to further the plot or the character arcs. The characters speak simply to fill time. There’s an attempt to create relationships through dialogue, but this is completely ineffective in the film. Since there’s no complexity, or subtext, or subtlety to the lines, the characters can’t effectively use them as a tool to do anything interesting.

Thompson’s love of zombie movies comes through in homages to Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, as well as Max Brook’s book, The Zombie Survival Guide. The former is represented in the cinematography with quick, jumpy shots of somewhat simple movements strung together in succession, while The Zombie Survival Guide is cited by Miller’s (Kenny James) notebook outlining zombie strategies and weapons, as well as his exclamation late in the film of the book’s mantra: “Blades don’t need reloading.”

The ensemble of actors are all really bad. Our hero, Miller, has some sort of dark past, possibly with a government agency kidnapping/killing his wife, but this is never explained properly. So, we are never able to understand what exactly is motivating Miller to survive, or what makes him so good at killing zombies, or for that matter where he’s from; could be Spain, Russia, or Gotham City based on his indecipherable accent and ridiculous Bale-like intensity throughout. James co-stars with Michael Empson and Michael Harthen, who play Mark and Tom, respectively. Empson is as close to a highlight as this film gets. He has some genuine emotion, but still nothing spectacular. Harthen resembles a less intimidating Mark Zuckerberg, which may sound impossible, except he wears a ruffled tuxedo shirt for most of the film.

Special Features include commentary by Ryan Thompson, co-writer Adam Goron, and sound designer David Fienup, as well as some deleted scenes. The back of the case promises 30 minutes of deleted scenes, but it’s closer to a more merciful 10 minutes and features a decent scene with a bunch of characters sitting around a campfire talking about where they were when the apocalypse started.

Joe Sanders is a playwright and college instructor in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He has a Master’s degree in playwriting and a Bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Western Michigan University, where he currently teaches Thought and Writing.

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