REVIEW: American Zombie
Due to the social commentary so easily found within movies about zombies as well as budget restraints as the undead are such an easy ‘monster’ to create the whole ‘shaky cam’ or first person styled zombie movie has been on the rise so it should be no surprise that this was released in the same year as Romero’s own documentary styled film “Diary of the Dead.” However while Diary bills itself as a documentary maker who doesn’t want to face reality, hides behind the camera, and as a social commentary on how the news works in general this film is slightly different. In the world of American Zombie the undead are not Romero’s slow moving mindless zombies after their next tasty treat, in fact in American Zombie we get one of the earlier movies of the ‘intelligent zombie’ being fully in place. Not only are these zombies self aware but much like in the novel Breathers by S.G. Browne these zombies are known to exist and treated like second class citizens.
The saying of “We’re Here, We’re Dead, Get Used To It!” is the motto by which the undead of this documentary live by while trying to become the equals of the living that they once were. The ‘documentary’ starts as just a rough idea of the two filmmakers Grace Lee and John Solomon (who play themselves) that show how John sells Grace on the idea that they should work together to make a film about zombies. He wants to explore the culture of the living dead and while he is very much under the belief that they do live on human flesh and are the stereotypes of horror films he has seen she wants to show how they actually survive in society and are taken advantage of and abused.
This being the case they find four zombies that are some what connected to follow around. All four of these zombies are either directly or indirectly involved with each other or the Z.A.G. (Zombie Advocacy Group) which is the group that follows the slogan I mentioned earlier. These four zombies are Lisa (Jane Edith Wilson) who is a florist that wants to live a very zen like peaceful life, Joel (Al Vicente) who is the founder of Z.A.G. and clearly in charge, Ivan (Austin Basis) who is working a dead end job as a convenience store clerk and is clearly meant to be the comedic relief as someone we can make fun of, and finally Judy (Suzy Nakamura) who just wants to find someone who can love her that she can also love.
As many complaints as I do have about the film I have to admit that on the social commentary portion of things it really does hit the nail on the head. From sexism to bigotry the film really does capture some of the worst parts about humanity that are deemed “OK” against minorities in various social circles of the United States. While not as prominent as they once were all of these are still issues that come up and the documentary found a great way to address them – through putting zombies through them.
If you are a fan of documentary styled films you’ll easily find quite a few aspects of this to enjoy. Watching it through the eyes of a zombie fanatic, making it a combination of a documentary AND adding in intelligent zombies just didn’t feel right. The zombies being interviewed were portrayed as both too close together as well as too far apart socially, just didn’t feel right. Still it’s something zombie related AND a semi-original concept even though there were a few documentary styled films around at the same time it definitely did it in a different manner than the others. Again this one is only for the documentary lovers and hardcore zombie fans as there is little to no action, gore, and does involve the intelligent zombie which is still not fully accepted by lovers of the living dead.
