Excellent in every way
November 28, 2008
An excellent, intellectually stimulating film, much needed in a sub genre full of dross. It engages on many levels and you can really get into the people they meet, they are very interesting.
This is a film that starts light and fluffy, even funny and amusing in places then by the end is deadly serious, those sweet friendly zombies are suddenly clearly as sweet and friendly as a rabid rottweiler. It scared the pants off me and made me worried about the topic - one that doesn't even exist!! Excellent effort. Especially the closing scene.
The one star review here on the page by another reviewer is undeserved. Mockumentaries are not always comedies and don't have to be comedies. They can be comedirs (e.g. Spinal Tap and the other reviewer mentions Zelig) but they can also be deadly serious. There are many serious examples (like the recent post apocalyptic one set in San Francisco- "Ever Since the World Ended").
One Of The Best Zombie Movies In The Genre
(1 of 1 Found this Helpful)
October 6, 2008
At this point as a society, we've coupled zombies and comedy. I'm sure there are a myriad of compelling psychological reasons why this is so. But whatever our complex need to attach comedic value to something as existentially horrifying as reanimated corpses, it manifests itself in an equally complex milieu. The zombie/comedy dyad operates within a very wide spectrum. Zombie movies can be hilariously funny, a la Sean of the Dead, or stark and terrifying, as in the original Night of the Living Dead (which uses only a sprinkling of comedy to balance the effect).
I think the other reviewers may have expected this movie to be a lot more screwball than it was. The fact that it wasn't doesn't constitute a failure. The slapstick zombie movie is only one type of a surprisingly complex subgenre of cinema. And this ain't it.
American Zombie asks viewers to suspend disbelief to its very limits, and assume that zombies are both real and that they are deserving of deeper consideration. For anyone who ever spent more than an hour in discussion of zombie physiology, cause, and social consequence, this movie is like candy.
The movie (which is conducted like a documentary) follows four "high-functioning" zombies living (also dating, consuming, and working) among regular humans in Los Angeles. Each subject has his or her own take on his unique "condition."
The general feeling of the film is the same as that of a documentary following people diagnosed with an untreatable medical condition. Ivan begins with the statement (paraphrased), "I don't know how long it will be before my body decomposes, so I'm living each day at a time." A second character, Lisa, is first seen wandering (a little plaintively) in a cemetery, admiring funerary bouquets and wondering if she'll ever know who she was in life.
The film plunges into the cause of zombiism: namely that some people carry an inert virus in the brain that isn't activated until the host is the victim of violent death. American Zombie then quickly investigates other compelling ideas like the implication of being an adult with essentially no identity and how the families respond to a loved one who was first a victim then a reanimated corpse with no memory of their past.
The film also investigates how the civil infrastructure manages a zombie population existing in tandem with the human population, from city government census agencies to a not-for-profit advocacy group working to avoid sweatshop-type exploitation of zombie workers.
There are a number of secondary themes, from zombie sexuality to zombie art. The effect is of a fully fleshed out scenario that lacks the gaping continuity holes that characterize 95% of zombie films. It gives the considerate viewer ample material to chew over and provides plenty of meat for discussion (pardon the necrophagy pun). Which, for an audience who groans at every inconsistency and implausibility that plague the genre, proffers a film that addresses our core hunger for a socially responsible zombie movie.
Finally, the film also follows the "filmmakers'" creative and production process. This is actually a little annoying for the first half of the film, and feels a little Lisa Ling (National Geographic)-ish. However, when the filmmakers disprove their own thesis statement, and find that their subjects are not the same as a cancer patient and cannot simply assimilate into the human population, the coverage of the filmmakers takes on a much more urgent life.
The climax of the film is a complete shock, which alone is rare in a well canvassed subgenre of cinema such as zombie movies. I won't ruin it. So I will conclude by saying American Zombie is as much unlike a George Romero or Sean of the Dead movie as one can get and has what it takes to delight and surprise veteran zombie aficionados. More casual audiences might lament it's lack of visual one-liners and lack of back to back gore scenes. But fans of the genre should seek this one out, as it's an infrequent example of a film doing something different with the zombie theme. It's a welcome addition to the canon.
American Zombie DOES work!
(1 of 1 Found this Helpful)
August 8, 2008
I do think it works as a funny mockumentary. I laughed out loud many times, more than I can say for many recent comedies. I thought it was a fresh idea and I liked the characters. The final scenes actually did have "horror" in it, as well.
Simply pointless. Completely misses the mark.
(1 of 5 Found this Helpful)
August 5, 2008
This is a mockumentary about four zombies living in Los Angeles trying to be accepted by the living society.
But it is a complete and absolute failure. Here's why: it is not funny.
Not that the concept/premise behind it is not funny in itself. IT IS BRILLIANT! But the problem is that the filmmakers are so aware of the brilliance of their concept/premise that they thought that the simple contrast between the candidness of zombies who look like people AND the fact that they ARE zombies would be hilarious. It is not.
Therefore, the fatal flaw here is that the film adheres so much to the documental construction of a serious reality (to be documented) that it COMPLETELY MISSES THE FACT THAT IT IS A MOCKUMENTARY IN FIRST PLACE... MISSING THE FACT THAT IT HAS TO BE FUNNY.
Woody Allen's Zelig is example of a perfect mockumentary. It constructs a unique character and places him in a real context. We know it is not real because the character is an obvious fantasy (the MOCK part of mockumentary) but it is so beautifully and credibly interwoven with the real context that it really looks real (the docUMENTARY part of mockumentary).
The success of Zelig comes from this: the more Woody Allen stretches the absurdity and comedy, the more he keeps the documentary form austere. The result? Contrast. The effect of the contrast? Sheer laughter.
In American Zombie, though, there's no comedy. In Zelig, concept, premise, character AND situations were funny. Here it's just the concept. The zombies are just another group of sad people, losers or, ultimately, just people.
And all of this because the filmmakers ALSO do not know to which audience they are working. Is it for the documentary crowd (who does not care about zombies at all) or is it for the zombie crowd (who won't buy zombies that look 99% like sad people)?
So this film is a disaster: unfunny, uninteresting, talky and boring.
And even if the desired effect were "keep it low" in order to scare people in the end (abandoning the "mock" and going for a even more sophisticated mixture between horror and documentary) it is also a failure because it is not scary at all.
Sadly enough, everything on this film so miscalculated and heavy handed, it completely misses the mark!!
