2014 (New Zealand)
Contains mild spoilers.
After recently
lampooning Cooties for offering little to an ever increasingly crowded genre, I
feel a little two faced liking director and writer Guy Pigden's equally crowd
pleasing zom-rom-com as much as I did. Just as farcical, slap-stick, easy to
watch and dare I say whimsical, on the surface there's little, save Cootie's
bigger budget and recognisable stars, to be able to call one out. Though
perhaps, there's the rub; Cootie's was a deliberate cash-in; a contrived
commercial venture that ticked all the right boxes because someone literally
had a list of boxes that needed to be ticked. I Survived a Zombie Holocaust, in future referred to as I Survived, feels like it ticked the boxes naturally;
purely by virtue of having a well-conceived and relatively simple script and
vision, and the ability and enthusiasm of actors and a production crew to see
it through. Nothing is forced and while the jokes, for the genre, are just as
obvious and the farce tinted homage plays out just as predictably, there's a delightful
authenticity and self-awareness, and you feel more you're invited in, than
cajoled along.
I Survived is what
I've started to refer to as a post-zombie zombie film. What I mean by that, is there's no pretence that zombies aren't a known
thing, that The Walking Dead phenomenon didn't happened, and even the remotest
of New Guinea tribesmen don't know the best way to deal with a shuffling corpse
is a spear through the head. For most zombie films this doesn't equate to reduction in tension or build up; but rather a getting to straight to it, once
anticipation makes way for survival, saving us all from ten minutes of rather
awkward and contrived action re-establishing all the ground rules. Not only
does I Survive wear this post-zombie t-shirt, but it's ballsy, or confident
enough to actually try and go one step further. You see, there's no pretence; not only is their world our world; their zombie reality and heritage our zombie
reality and heritage, but the film relies on all this for the narrative to make any sense at all.
Wesley Pennington
(Harley Neville), fresh from film school, has arrived on set as a junior runner
for the zombie b-movie 'Tonight They Come'. Quickly brought into line as the
shoot's dogsbody; he's also unwittingly one of the first to realise that parallel
to the watered down zombie schlock being filmed, there's a very real undead
threat, literally just around the corner. It's a fun, intelligenty thought out
and original premise which serves to simultaneously give licence for shots at
both b-movie films and b-movie film makers. SMP (Andrew Laing) the director cum
dictator of Tonight They Come leads the rather formulaic and exaggerated
production crew, with a sociopathic zeal through forty odd minutes of
surprisingly entertaining and witty parody until zombies meet zombie extras and
it's every bit all the running, screaming, carnage and death we've come to
love.
Setting itself up
the way it does, I Survived is almost a self-aware parody of a post-zombie
film, and probably now I'm thinking about it, a hard film to pull off without
coming across derogatory and insulting. I'm probably over complicating it all,
save to say, I Survived isn't demeaning or dumbed down, and that's the point.
It's clearly the work of people who get it; people who love the genre and have
something genuine and original to say. Zombie rom-coms, are a great phenomenon
but dangerously close to over-saturation, but Pigden et al. know it; and as
said, it's this self-awareness that, elevates it from the crowd. Even though I
Survived is every bit a a member of the genre and guilty in huge respects of all the
things its parodying, it somehow works precisely because it itself is in on the joke. It's refreshing, honest and playful yet
respectful; it's the comedian that gets away with all the offensive material
because first and foremost he's the butt of every joke.
I've also seen
comparisons made with Peter Jackson's eighties over-the-top slaughterfest Dead Alive (Braindead); what with Wesley's demeanour similar to Lionel's, the
copious gore, and the same New Zealand badge of honour, but I think it would be
doing both a disservice. Jackson's splatter masterpiece was a unique cinematic
experience; audaciously stupid and excessive all for the sheer hell of it.
Pigden's I Survive forges its own path, and whilst abundant in bad-taste and
zombie-excess, it's less about gore-shock and one-liners and more about fitting
in coherently with zombie-lore and providing its own subtler narrative. If
anything, playing with the post-zombie experience the way it does its closest
in style and substance to perhaps Mimesis, but with an added laughter track and a lot more innards.
I Survived a Zombie
Holocaust took a risk and in my opinion it paid off. It is yet another modern
rom-com but it works precisely because it knows it, and is happy to play along.
With some genuinely funny moments, some stupid jokes, a witty, unpredictable script and perfectly
pitched performances that played along it ticks all the right boxes for a fun zombie night in. Sure it's not without
fault; I'd have preferred it if the real zombie threat had arrived a good
ten or twenty minutes earlier, and I'd have liked them to have even pushed the
b-movie parody just that little bit harder; but over-all I felt they got it
pretty much spot on. Perhaps it also worked for me because unlike for most zom-rom-coms I
feel as a hardcore zombie film fan I am this time the target audience;
appreciative of the genre call-backs, the clever and satirical side swipes
at not just the b-movie film making but b-movie zombie films themselves and the rich and dark humour. I often accuse zom-rom-coms of dumbing down so as to branch out and
attract a wider audience and whilst I Survive can't shake this off in its entirety, the fact that it appears to know it, and play with this with such confidence and success is commendable - 7/10.
Steven@WTD.
Great review!
ReplyDelete