Enjoy this Monday with Mildred!
This is also Zombie World Tour post!
Kill Zombie!
Those pesky Russians are into everything these days. This Zombie World Tour takes us to highly diverse Amsterdam, where all the most hip people sprinkle Americanisms into their sentences, like “game over” and “chill” and of course the f bomb. That last one a lot. When a Russian satellite crashes into a building and dusts the city in green zombie gook, a small group of losers make their way to the “safe zone” set up by the Army. Along the way they have many ghoulish adventures, fall in love, heroically save the world and make us laugh doing it. Okay, not the last one so much, though they try really, really hard to be funny, which is probably why they are the furthest thing from it. It’s no Død snø.
Our main hero is Aziz, plodding along in a dull office job until he’s canned through the moronic screw ups of his slobby loser of a brother, by a boss in love with Aziz’s secret flame. The Dutch-Surinamese brothers spend the night in jail with two loopy, black Dutch rappers (from Morocco) and a taser-happy, busty blond police officer. She’s the muscle and voice of reason in the group, while Aziz is the heart. The other screw ups remain that way, squabbling incessantly like spoiled school boys. There’s not much forward motion toward the safe zone, including by the zombies who run when our heroes are moving and slow to a crawl when it’s time to walk and talk, as if they’re equipped with proximity sensors. The zombie rules are inconsistently enforced and the things are all snap and no bite, which also detracts from the comedy. Scary zombies make a funny movie.
I was impressed at the use of cell phones, a problem that plagued horror films for a decade and now seems to have finally been solved. Everyone wears a white shirt liberally smeared with gobs of chartreuse and crimson, so it could be a Christmas theme film, and there are nods to zombie and film tropes, like a mall scene, a Wilhelm Scream, and a steampunk basement that reminded me a lot of the mall power room from Dawn of the Dead. Subtitles kept me up with the dialogue but often sounded like a messy mix of Dutch, Americanisms, Moroccan and Sranan (a sort of pidgin Dutch). We can also give a shout out to the stupidest weapon ever, two orange bowling balls stuck on a guy’s hands. I may never complain about chain saws and weed whackers again.
I think I was most disappointed with the comedy. The film kept screaming at me that it was funny, but I don’t remember laughing at anything. Most of the problem was lame zombies and also scenes that hammered away at some joke or another for way too long, like The Zombie That Wouldn’t Die. I can’t even say the premise was good, though using the Russians as the scapegoat is always fun. I would recommend this if you have a high tolerance for stupid humor, especially of the boy cat fight variety, and like movies with lots of cinematic nods to better films.
LINKS:
Kill Zombie! (2012) – Trailer
Chick Flicking Reviews 