I'll preface this review by saying two things: one, I am a long-time fan of "bad" movies, i.e. MST3K, Rifftrax, and I go to see The Room live at least once a year. Two, I'm totally boning one of the lead actors in this production. This will not affect my honest and unbiased review. Okay, maybe a little.
My first thought when my boyfriend rented the film was, how much vodka am I going to need to watch this? He was embarrassed. I was hyped. He said he didn't want his name on IMDb. I was even more hyped. We booted the film, and the running time appeared on the screen. 45 minutes. 6 years of production. I was flabbergasted. "It's seriously only 45 minutes long? I'M GOING TO RIP MY CLOTHES OFF," I screamed, and proceeded to do so.
It began. When we reached the opening credits – suddenly, Times New Roman. Or an extremely similar variation, with no effect on the text.Wow, he's really going with that, I thought. I asked aloud, "Abomination Films? More like Font Abominations, amirite?" At one point in the film there is a part with Comic Sans. This was briefly very distracting, as you can see from the fact that I am writing an entire paragraph about it.
Aaaaaanyway, the acting. Yes, I should probably discuss that. There is something in this movie that vaguely qualifies as acting. My boyfriend does a masterful job of playing Kyle, The Straight White Male Protagonist With Zero Personality. In an early scene with a love interest, there is a stretch of dialog where he romantically explains to her how she is "not like a girl, so more like, a real person". Maybe the straight part could be debated. There is another part where the survivors go into a gun shop – with guns literally on the wall – and he asks "do you guys have any weapons here?" It was a brilliant moment that highlighted the traditional obliviousness trope in horror films. Alternatively, it could have just been my boyfriend playing himself. The other characters' acting styles range from "I Think I'm in a Film, Maybe" to "Bits of the Scenery Are Still in My Teeth".
The meat (heh) of the plot of this horror-comedy is a tragic tale of a man with an allergy to tomatoes, who just wanted his goddamn order gotten right for once. This topic was especially near to my heart as I personally am deathly allergic to dairy, eggs, and peanuts. The man and his crew specifically clarify what they want on the hamburger, and the restaurant staff still manages to mess it up. Unbelievable. I really felt for the guy. When he said he wanted to kill everyone in the town, I couldn't wait for him to do it. I felt the waitress was the best actress in this film as the villain of the story.
Once the zombies started coming, there were a lot of newer characters who kept prompting me to ask, "WHO ARE YOU?" The cuts are fast and furious. At one point one of the main female characters attacks her dad-turned-zombie, and it is immediately proceeded by another cut. Some of the zombies were pretty convincing, like that one naked lady for the much-needed gratuitous zombie T & A, others just looked like me after I tried to do my eye makeup while stumbling around with hangover. There's also a shot of the Zombie Walk in Boston. I see what you did there. Other hilarious moments include one brief glimpse of lightning bolt stock footage (shoutouts to Adobe), and perhaps the funniest moment of the film – a misguided attempt at special effects to make a below-the-waist amputation that simply has to be seen to be believed. No words can do it justice.
At one point towards the end, you can very actively see the fatigue on the survivors' face, although this is likely fatigue from the actual filming of the movie lasting for so long. This really adds to the effect. The musical score features maybe a total of 6 songs that I counted, at least 3 of which are just a synthesizer repeating a few second cues on a loop. Fantastic.
Overall, this is a movie I would watch again, and probably multiple times. It is seriously entertaining. It's Birdemic with Zombies, if anything actually happened in the first 30 minutes of Birdemic. The answer to my earlier vodka question turned out to be none, although it most certainly enhanced the experience. And while I enjoyed it a lot, the sequel film I really want to see come out of this is The Making of Dead Burger. I can only imagine an epic story on the level of Greg Sestero's The Disaster Artist. Maybe I'll nag "Kyle" to write a book when we're not making out.
