Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! (2008)

Review by Sean Patterson



"Super soldiers? More like genetically altered super zombies!"

That quote is from the first four minutes of the movie Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! During those first few minutes I was instantly in love with the style of the movie. Minutes in and already zombies were being sliced up with ice skates. I expected to have a lot of fun playing along with a movie that was over-the-top campy, yet self aware with cheesy dialogue.
Then I was abruptly ripped away from that fantasy when it's revealed that the first scene is only the movie a little girl is watching late at night. Her father tells her she'd better not have nightmares. I can't tell whether Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! is attempting to emulate that Evil Dead 2 style of camp or make fun of it by being a more realistic portrayal of zombie mayhem. That's a problem.
The movie quickly shifts to a strip club, where long scenes introduce the strippers and all of the other characters that will soon be trapped in the club. These scenes are long and filled with exposition. They are also boring. Thirty minutes into the movie there are no zombies to be found, save for the teaser opening.
The cause of the zombie uprising is some tainted crack rocks. Everything else is predictable.
I think the fatal flaw here is two-fold. A movie can get by with sub-par acting if the writing is imaginative or original. A movie with poor writing can be lifted to a certain extent by good actors. But a movie with neither of these ends up being falling flat. Especially when it relies on dialogue as much as Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! does.
The actresses playing the strippers seem to get into character and are good at playing bimbos. The men in the movie deliver their lines as if reading from cue cards, and looked as bored as I felt. What's missing from all of them is any sense of urgency. Often characters watch with pallid expressions as zombies eat their friends or relatives.
There are still things here for a horror fan: boobs, blood, and some fun zombie kills. Some of the kills have cgi components, which makes them look cartoonish, but I laughed a couple of times anyway. The ending is fantastically bloody.
My problem with Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! isn't that it's a bad movie. Even a bad movie can have some personality. The pacing of the movie is severely off and the characters just aren't interesting enough. I found myself having a hard time staying awake.