'Zombibi'/'Kill Zombie' (2012)

Same film, just a different name depending on where you see it... My copy is called 'Kill Zombie' so that's what I'll call it here.

I'm managing to get a few pages read here and there but on the whole, reading is going about as well as you'd expect on a Bank Holiday weekend with two young kids who want something to do... Yeah, that well ;o) That's ok though, there's always time to read but there's never quite enough time to spend with your kids, make the most of it while you have it.

And that's why today sees another 'zombie movie' post, by the time I made it home (last night) after a day in Richmond, watching a movie was about all I was good for. I needed something mindless and fun, luckily I had a copy of 'Kill Zombie' to hand and an hour and twenty two minutes later...

After a night in jail, four hung-over friends and one gutsy female police officer emerge to discover their city ravaged by a zombie outbreak. When one of them receives a cry for help from a sole survivor they are all forced to embark on a reluctant rescue mission, pitting their wits, and risking their lives against these flesh devouring mutants.

If you were to line up all the zombie movies ever in order of quality, well... At the 'Good' end of the line, you'd have the first three Romero movies and the 'Dawn of the Dead' remake amongst others. At the 'Bad' end of the line, you'd see 'Hard Rock Zombies' (and I still owe you a post about that 'movie'...) and just below that, 'Zombie 108' and the utterly dire 'Zombie Creeping Flesh'. That movie is truly bad and you will never see a post about it here because it would mean my having to watch it again. I can't do it...

Back to the line of zombie movies. In the very middle of that line, you'll find 'Kill Zombie', a movie that is no classic by any means but is fun enough that it sits very comfortably above all the bad movies. It may not stay in your head for long but you'll enjoy it while you're watching it and at the end of the day, isn't that all we need from a film? Maybe, I don't know...

'Kill Zombie' suffers very early on from an unfortunate habit of borrowing large chunks of plot from 'Shaun of the Dead'. You've got your amiable loser determined to change his life for the better, a friend (in this case, his brother) holding him back and a list of things that he needs to do, all in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. It's all a little too familiar to be really interesting. You feel like you've seen it all before and that's because you have, and in a much better film to be honest. The attempts at humour fall flat as well because, yes, you've heard all the jokes before as well and a joke is never quite as funny the second time round.

And then the zombies start puking up green slime, and everything changes.

All of a sudden, the film basically becomes the equivalent of a conveyor belt of zombies being killed in as many ways as possible. The plot is still there but now it's also about splattering as much (badly cgi'd) gore across the screen as possible. And the energy of the film changes for the better. 'Kill Zombie' is no longer a slightly ponderous retelling of 'Shaun of the Dead', now it's a batshit crazy hour and twenty two minutes of zombie death. I don't know what prompted the change in direction but as far as I'm concerned, there's always room for a slice of irreverent zombie massacre. They've even got a guy whose whole reason for being there is to be the guy who climbs to the top of a zombie infested office block, only to have to run all the way back down once he realises that it is about to explode. That's how much 'Kill Zombie' doesn't care about anything other than gore and cheap laughs. I've got to be in the right mood for this kind of zombie movie but when I am, 'Kill Zombie' will more than likely be the film that I watch.

'Kill Zombie' only really gets going when it decides to be entirely it's own movie and not one that lurks in the shadows of its betters. It won't go down as one of the classics but if you're exhausted after looking after the kids, this is the movie I'd recommend you watch ;o)