Zombie Nation

Review

There have been a string of horror movies by low budget studios over the past decade or so that seem to be playing a game of cat and mouse between purposely trying to be bad but not letting on this fact. Except, in the past five years, it seems the "how low do you go" bar has been set so low that the only movies that can compete are so abyssmally bad that there is almost no way that they could have been accidental. We are talking Manos: Hands of Fate except, you know, even more not good.

I have no idea what is up with Zombie Nation. There are some scenes that seem to be trying but according to IMDB.com, its tagline "This is movie is C for Craptastic" or something like that. Is it meant to be bad? Is it a movie that tried to somewhat overcome its badness with a few honest scenes and others where it did the best it could? Did the filmmakers not care? I am actually hoping that it is a low-fi, low-budget "zombie" (think White Zombie...sort of...but voodoo that you don't dare do zombies...not...well, also sort of Romero zombies...I don't know) flick that realizes it can't compete and so enjoys and plays in the camp of its own limitation. But I almost get the feeling that over limited itself to increase this effect and sort of pushes past the "it's so bad it's good" to "it's so bad it's actually pretty bad".

The storyline is little more than an extended episode of Tales from the Darkside based on a short story by a writer inspired by Tales from the Crypt (and no, not really, I mean thematically). Man was tortured as child. Man, as cop, with a war past (of a couple years ago? or is this set in the future?) now kills women and examines their mouths. Watches some odd Jesus Camp inspiring VHS tapes. Man is from "Alabama" but has German accent, as does his Catholic garb wearing Baptist pastor. Either the film makers are confused or simply don't care. Kills a woman with a voodoo curse...and poof...zombies. Well, hot women with black make up on their face...which works. Up until they eat a penis, which I can only assume is a tribute to the 5-minute ass munch scene from Todd Sheet's Zombie Bloodbath (the first one is the only "good" one).

There is the brief scene where the zombies talk about being zombies that could almost be made to work if the filmmaker cared, which I assume they don't. There is also a scene where the zombies become police officers, I think, that could be the lead in to a really bad zom-com series called "Patrolling the Dead Beat" (you heard it here, first...copyright 2007 Doug Bolden...hehe). Anyhow, if you make it that far, you have probably wasted your life. Like movies of this kind, you can watch them, but only if you haven't already watched every other good zombie movie out there or if you are drunk, as was I, and its a friday night and you have friends over and you need something with large breasts on occassion but no plot so you won't be afraid of missing something.

Then, well, it won't exactly do but since there is no real action ever you can have plenty of oppurtunities to get up and get some more gin to drink. I give it half a pitcher of strong gin and juice!