Friday, December 10, 2010

ZOMBIE RELATED: Aaah! Zombies!! REVIEW

TITLE: Aaah! Zombies!!
YEAR: 2007
DIRECTOR: Matthew Kohnen
RATING: NR

A zombie movie from the zombie's point of view??!!
That's certainly an original (and amazingly simple) idea, but does the movie work?


That's the hook with Aaah Zombies, the promise to see a zombie story, from the perspective of the zombies themselves. But unfortunately, Aaah Zombies' independent film limitations render most of it's ingenious ideas ineffective. The movie captures the spirit of it's idea as we start out, but mostly falls flat, due to it's indie, and most likely very low budget, pedigree, especially as it shambles forward. The cast (with a couple exceptions), production, story, and execution are lacking overall, and what could have been a great film on a big (bigger) budget or scale, is mostly an exercise in futility.

TYPE OF ZOMBIE, OR ACTUAL ZOMBIES?: These are true zombies here, slow moving, but a bit lacking in the brain/flesh craving department. Also, we spend most of our time in the zombie POV, which has everyone else (the uninfected) sped up, and the zombie cast appearing normal (as they are unaware of their zombification, and therefore see themselves as normal, for most of the film).

GORE: Not really, it's pretty mild. This one doesn't have the budget for it, as there are a couple dismemberments that are key, but are more of a gag than anything, and the whole movie skews towards the mildly humorous...

EFFECTS: Are pretty low budget, with black and white photography to illustrate the human POV of the zombies, along with some mediocre make-up to give the zombies dark veins contrasting white flesh, to go with what are some obvious white contacts.

STRAIGHT REVIEW: NOT RECOMMENDED

ZOMBIE FAN REVIEW: NOT RECOMMENDED.
I wanted to give this a mild recommendation for the zombie faithful, so if you're really die-hard, give it a look, it's obvious this was a work of love by the writer/director/producers, but ultimately the film gets pretty tedious to get through by the mid-point. Some massive editing and run time trimming Planet Terror style would've helped save what little charm and originality the film offered, but that would've left us with less than a feature.

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