REVIEW: Zombie Town
Hicks, White Trash, Hunters, Good Ol Southern Boys, A Girl, And Zombies!
With a formula like that you just can’t go wrong right? Wrong. First time (and only time at this point according to IMDB) writer and director Damon Lemay has brought forth a very easy combination that can lead to a fun filled late night flick but instead put together a mash up that, while resembling the look of a late 70’s or early 80’s horror film was not able to capture the feel of it. Now I’m not saying it was a horrible movie. I actually wish it was fully able to capture the feel of a 70’s or 80’s film more so then it did as once it got going you really did have a hard time looking away from the screen. For a clearly low budget it was able to provide a lot of laughs with how campy it was.
The film starts with a group of ‘hunters’ who are clearly just out at their cabin for a weekend of drinking and have plan to actually use the gun they have there but instead just booze it up. While on the whole this is a clearly solid plan through the door stumbles a man completely torn up. While everyone’s first impulse is to attempt to help him he quickly digs in on the feast of drunken hunters. Yes, the first zombie has stumbled into the film in an opening scene. The hunters are quickly torn to pieces or turned into the undead and after a ridiculously long opening credit sequence we meet two friends Jake (Adam Hose) and Denton (Phil Burke) who run a towing service. We quickly learn that they are pretty much running the business into the ground and aren’t the most motivated of people. They are called to move a broken down truck and when they stop to explore the hunting cabin that we see in the introduction Denton is attacked AND bitten by one of the undead and as Jake is gone getting help turns.
Denton returns shortly after as the town sheriff is looking into the attack to be arrested and while in jail we find out that there is a cause for the undead. Yes a zombie movie that does not use a standard reason on why we have zombies and is much closer to the film Slither in that the zombies are being controlled by alien slug looking parasites. The fun part is that the parasites can multiply inside of the body and leave at will to infect others and aren’t only infecting others through bites. Clearly the ‘zombies’ are flesheaters but they definitely are a bit on the unique side.
After Denton fully dies the parasites leave him to try and infect others including the sheriff. Right around this time we are introduced to Randy who joins up with Jake to try to stop this infection. Without Randy’s character it may have gotten too stagnant but he brings just enough both annoyance and sarcasm to play off of the rest of the characters to be perfect in the film.
The town folk are quickly turned and a group of college aged students led by Jake (and Randy) are left to attempt to defend both the survivors and themselves. I do have to give the movie credit for probably having the highest count of elderly zombies in a movie that I have ever seen. Seriously there are more “old” zombies in this film then in anything I’ve seen before. They infect a nursing home and you actually feel as if that happens with how many on screen zombies we get that aren’t falling apart from being eaten. If you are looking for something that has the look and ALMOST the feel of an older horror film that was made recently I suggest checking it out. It won’t be the best zombie movie you’ve ever seen. Not the goriest, not the best plot, not the funniest – it is a great mix though of all three of these for just an overall good time.
Available at Amazon
