Review by Keri O’Shea
2011 has been a bumper year for horror comedies, it seems. At least, I’ve had the benefit of a pretty clear run of horror-comedies this year that have worked very well – which is a nice surprise, as it can be rough terrain at times – neither horror nor comedy, fish nor fowl. So how does DeadHeads hold up? I went into this viewing wondering if my clear run was about to draw to a close, but knowing that Ben reviewed it after this year’s Frightfest and thought it was great, as did Kayley at Toronto After Dark. I have to say, I think that the ‘when’ and ‘where’ in this case goes some way to explain this very favourable verdict. Watching it alone, in December, hunched in front of a heater at home, I daresay I got something rather different from my viewing of the film.
Before I rattle on about this, here’s the basic plot. Mike (Michael McKiddy) has a problem: he’s just woken up alone, disorientated and amnesic in some sort of pod. Oh, and he’s also a zombie, although in this case this essentially amounts to a nasty skin condition because, unlike most zombies, he’s lucid, smart and not too interested in chowing down on the other white meat, not to mention the fact that he’s been shot in the head and is still going strong. After he escapes, he rambles around, trying to get a sense of where he is, and runs into another lucid zombie by the name of Brent (Ross Kidder). Gradually, they piece together a few things. Mike has been dead for three years, they’re in Colorado, and before his little accident he was about to propose to his girlfriend Ellie. As Brent opines, he evidently dodged that bullet and caught another. Still, they decide that Mike ought to track down the young lady in question because if love sees no colour, then it sure as shit isn’t going to turn a hair at a bit of putrefaction. Thing is, though, two zombies aren’t going to be able to road trip across to Michigan just like that; there’s a group of bounty hunters on their tails, and some sinister reasons why they ended up in their unfortunate postmortem state.
My first thought here was that DeadHeads was going to end up as some sort of post-Japanese body horror, which itself owes a fair amount to US 80s body horror, like Re-Animator, or else have a lot in common with interpretations of grindhouse classics like Hobo with a Shotgun; the bright colouration, stylised gore and cartoonish credits certainly put me in mind of some of these, but the movie didn’t really stick with this opening impression, settling into more standard road movie/buddy style humour before too long – zombies notwithstanding, of course. Not that directors/writers The Pierce Brothers neglect to pay homage to horror along the way; as proudly declared on the press release which accompanied my screener, the guys are the sons of Evil Dead SFX photographer Bart Pierce, and no opportunity is missed to nod towards that cult classic, including a bordering-on-nepotistic amount of footage from the film itself during a drive-in scene. It’s not the only movie reference, either; you might also note a mention of Dawn of the Dead, copious Shaun of the Dead scenealikes (although if anyone dares trot out the jaded suggestion that ‘this is this year’s Shaun of the Dead’ I’ll strangle them) and even a mention of The Goonies. Essentially, this is a film almost tailor-made to generate crowd-wide approbation at horror movie festivals. We all know the kind. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s a thing, and unless you’re prone to whooping at the screen in your living room, some of the in-jokes might be lost on home audiences.
One more issue, though – it may well be that the film was at a disadvantage with me because of its similarities to another horror-comedy I saw and reviewed very recently, namely Wasting Away (2007), alternatively known as ‘Aaah! Zombies!!’ in all its badly-punctuated glory. (Read that review at Sex Gore Mutants.) In that horror-comedy too we had lucid, sympathetic zombies for protagonists, struggling to understand their plights and get to grips with the subject of love whilst dealing with, you know, being the living dead, most notably the fact that the corrupt living wanted to dispose of them. I realise that this is just poor luck on my part, but when you see two very similar movies in a short space of time I’m afraid it inevitably affects the experience of viewing the more recent one. The whole zombie motif is also so overused these days that unless absolutely everything else in the film is amazing, then there’s a serious risk of the film being less than welcome.
Still, it’s not all doom and gloom for DeadHeads at all. The slapstick elements and gags here are often fun, to be fair, the pace of the movie is about right, and the characterisation is pleasantly overblown to a degree that the more folk you could get watching this, the more enjoyable it would doubtless be. It’s decently and earnestly acted throughout, too, and although it takes on the theme of romance in amongst all that zombie action, it handles that plot element just fine, neither too trite nor too involved in tone. This film didn’t rock my world, but it was okay, and the fact that the movie is endorsed by none other than Bruce Campbell will see it a long way, I’m sure.
DeadHeads is released to Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray on 2nd January from G2 Pictures.