Daniel Olmos [Celluloid 03.05.15] post apocalyptic zombies horror comedy



Shortly after the start of The Walking Deceased, the screen fades to black and a caption reading "29 Days later" appears. At that point you can immediately tell what kind of film it's going to be. It is, of course, a seriously silly spoof film which lampoons a whole host of recent zombie films.


Now there have been Zombie comedies (Zom-coms?) before. We've had Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland, and even the Romero classics showed flashes of jet black humour, but I don't think we've had anything quite like this until now.


The Walking Deceased is a madcap comedy that follows Sheriff Lincoln after he wakes up and finds a world in which the dead have risen from the grave, he quickly joins up with some other survivors and... Oh I don't why I'm bothering with the plot, there's really not much here, and there doesn't need to be, the only important thing to tell you is that it's much funnier than it has a right to be.


It's cheap, it's derivative and it's crude, with completely gratuitous nudity and my own pet hate, over-long scenes of druggie abandon filmed in slow motion, the type that every single Seth Rogen film seems to be contractually obliged to include. There's about four characters too many, and there are some overly long extended jokes that just seem to fizzle out without any kind of punchline. With that said, It's perfect midnight movie fodder, with direct references to some of the biggest zombie movies (and of course a very popular TV show) of the last fifteen years or so and fans of the genre will have fun spotting them all.


I'm not going to spoil things by listing them here, but there are plenty. It's a shame that the writers mostly stuck to the recent spat of films, and from those, the more well known ones. As a nerdy zombie film lover I would have enjoyed seeing some of the older classics in there too.





The jokes come thick and fast and in the first half the scatter-shot approach has a suprising amount of hits. Sadly the film loses it's way later on and the nerdy spoof charm gives way to a more straightforward attempt at a comedy horror which falls a bit flat. There's still something there for genre buffs, and a few very funny surreal scenes which reminded me of the totally insane and hilarious Wet Hot American Summer, and that's really no bad thing.


In the end who is the film for? Well, If you are a zombie buff who loves bad jokes and straight to video style horrors then you may well get a kick out of this, if your sense of humour is a little more sophisticated, or you've never seen a zombie flick, then it's probably not for you. If you've never seen a zombie flick, what are you doing here reading this review!?


ARC Entertainment will be releasing The Walking Deceased in Theaters, VOD and iTunes on March 20th.




Recommended Release: The Walking Deceased

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