I guess on one hand I should be happy The
Asylum has upgraded their acting corps. Now this could
be that The Asylum is tossing more money towards their movies
to get these better actors or it could be that there is a
certain crop of actors out there who need money. Any
kind of money. I'm going with the latter. But
while having Darryl Hannah and Mrs. Partridge and Alan Ruck
and Anthony Michael Hall in this movie 'Zombie Night' is cool
and all, I think I miss the earnestness of hard working people
of suspect talent as opposed to genuinely talented bored
people.
Patrick (Hall), his daughter Tracie (Rachel G. Fox) and
Tracie's homegirl Rachel (Meg Rutenberg) are heading home when
the Zombie Apocalypse breaks out. Circumstance
leads to these three having to exit the automobile, with them
observing that the dead have risen, and with the knowledge
that the dead have risen, Rachel logically runs from the dead
towards a graveyard. That singular act of unrepentant
stupidity almost guarantees that this movie is heading towards
the path of a classic. Then Rachel hides from the
zombies in a tree which seems like a solid move since I'm
unaware of zombies having the ability to climb, even though
they are nipping at her heels. Then she tosses her flip
flop to distract the zombies, which amazingly works because
everyone knows zombies lack focus and have amazingly short
attention spans. Then she runs from the zombies, but
falls in an open grave. And stays there. And
dies. Because Rachel is stupid. And thusly, Rachel
is awesome.
The awesomeness of this movie kinds of end with Rachel dying,
partly because now we meet Patrick's wife Birdie (Hannah) and
mostly it ends because we meet Birdies mom (Mrs.
Partridge). Shirley Jones will whine and whine in this
movie so incessantly that a zombie can't get to her soon
enough. Also we have the introduction of today's We All
Gonna Die character in Janice (Tia Robinson) who also has the
misfortune of being Black. She was cute too. Oh
well.
Next door to Birdie and her whining mother
are the Ladden's led by their patriarch Joe (Ruck) and they
should be okay from the zombie outbreak because they have a
panic room. They also have a maid who spouts off
biblical prophecies which makes everybody very
uncomfortable. The maid wants to go home, Joe says no
and locks her in a bedroom while everybody else retreats to
the panic room. Joe is kind of a jerk. Also, the bedroom
has a window that the maid could easily climb out of, but of
course it's guarded by zombies. Look, it makes very
little sense to board up your front door but fail to board up
your windows. Joe is also kind of stupid. The
Ladden's would've been safe in the panic room, but
circumstances, mainly their two stupid children, keep this
from happening.
The word is, once the family is united and on the run from the
zombie posse, is that all you have to do is make it to
morning, then the zombies collapse or something. Safety
could be just a panic room away, but we've already established
that Joe is kind of a dick, so that's probably not gonna
happen. Thus safety is lies in the ability to run.
Minus one whiny grandma and straddled with one completely
hysterical We All Gonna Die chick. One who told my man
that if the zombies are eating her, make sure he puts a bullet
in her head. That sista ain't said nothing but the word.
'Zombie Night' was directed by John Gulagar who made a name
for himself directing those 'Feast' movies, and then directed
that Piranha sequel. Now John is my main man and all,
but I gotta say that with each subsequent film homeboy has
directed, at least in my worthless opinion, they all have
gotten incrementally less entertaining hopefully bottoming out
with this one.
It's not that 'Zombie Night' was awful, though it was close,
but it did come off as pointless and repetitive. While I
appreciate a movie that jumps right into the action, just a
tad bit of exposition never hurt anybody. I mean we get
nothing in regards to this movie. No back story, front
story, middle story, character development, humor, plot
progression… nothing. We get zombies walking around,
chasing people we don't care about even a little tiny
bit. All I'm saying is that is if one is going to hire
some well known, perhaps down on their luck actors to be in
ones movie, one might as well give them something to do as far
as actual acting goes.
Of course I'm never going to be one to actively petition for
some low budget zombie movie to amp up the dialog and
melodrama, and given a choice between poorly written dialog or
poorly executed action, I'm going to choose action almost
every time, but the action in 'Zombie Night' just wasn't good
enough to offset the rest of the movies failings.
Still I didn't hate this movie. I do like to talk to my
TV when characters do stupid stuff, which does bring me joy,
and I was a literal chatter box with my TV on this one.
That in of itself is not enough to recommend that anyone go
out of their way to see 'Zombie Night' but we do like to close
out these things on a positive note.
