The Walking Deceased, 2015.
Directed by Scott Dow.
Starring Tim Ogletree, Joey Oglesby, Dave Sheridan, Troy Ogletree, Sophia Taylor Ali, Jacqui Holland and Mason Dakota Galyon.
SYNOPSIS:
A police officer wakes from a coma to discover that the zombie apocalypse has changed the world as he knew it. Sounds familiar…
You generally know that an idea has peaked when the spoofs and parodies start appearing; the problem with the zombie genre is that arguably the first comedic take appeared 30 years ago with Return of the Living Dead and has shown little sign of letting up, especially now anybody with a computer and a graphics programme can seemingly knock something vaguely passable together to keep Asda customers happy.
Primarily riffing on AMC’s The Walking Dead, The Walking Deceased also takes pot-shots at Zombieland, 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and the inescapable Dawn of the Dead as it follows Sheriff Lincoln (Dave Sheridan), Chicago (Joey Oglesby, substituting for Zombieland’s Woody Harrelson) and Romeo (Troy Ogletree channelling Jesse Eisenberg) as they try to escape the hordes of zombies that have taken over the city. Of course they hitch up with some female characters, escape to the country, find a farmhouse occupied by an old couple and cover all of the other plot points you would expect before the inevitable show down.
Visually, The Walking Deceased looks pretty good; cheap, but still pretty good considering that most modern low-budget zombie movies look like the cut-scenes from an Xbox game. There are even one or two genuine giggles (note – giggles, not hearty belly-laughs) that, like all parodies, only work if you’re familiar with the source material, like Sheriff Lincoln calling his son by the wrong name, Lincoln’s first kill when he wakes from his coma and that there’s a country girl named Isaac. But a couple of giggles in an 84 minute film labelled as a comedy isn’t a very good ratio, and despite the first 20 minutes being fairly entertaining the film soon runs out of steam as if the writers had nowhere to go once they had parodied the first episode of The Walking Dead. After that the film has little-to-no energy as it shambles along trying to cram in as many lame jokes as it can, all to diminishing returns as the sheer dullness of not knowing where to go with it becomes too much and it just sort of fizzles out. The final lines hint that another threat could be on the way but, given how flat and lifeless this parody is, the porn version of The Walking Dead is likely to have more going for it than another attempt at comedy as tedious as this. Just watch Zombieland instead.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Chris Ward