Tag Archives: parody

Dead Before Dawn (2012)

Dead Before Dawn (2012)A CURSE IS UNLEASHED in Dead Before Dawn!

A group of college friends — some of whom play football and wear cheer leader outfits for a high school, because that isn’t confusing — accidentally break an evil urn in an occult gift shop.  As the dust settles they inadvertently create a horrible curseis there any other kind —  UPON THEMSELVES!

SPHS
SPHS — yeah… usually HS means High School — so how are they college students?!?  Is it possible that these “college” students attend St. Paul’s High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba?

As a result of the malediction, everyone they make eye contact with will kill themselves and then become “Zemons” — a combination of Zombie Demons — and the high school college kids only have 24 hours to reverse the curse!  With the fate of the entire world resting on their shoulders, our heroes race through the night armed with a slew of homemade weapons, avoiding eye contact and hickeys, and filling their shopping list of items needed to reverse their curse.  Will they be able to reverse the curse and save the day, or will all of humanity be Dead Before Dawn?

spawn from Hell seeks loving gentleman
This gave me flashbacks of some of my ex-girfriends … oh yeah, good times.

Dead Before Dawn is not a serious zombie film.

If you come away from DBD thinking, “You know, as serious films of the zombie genre go … that sucked!”  I read reviews that essentially said this, and those people MISSED THE POINT.

Spoof – A humorous imitation of something, typically a film or a particular genre of film, in which its characteristic features are exaggerated for comic effect.

Dead Before Dawn is similar to Z Nation — they’re intentionally trying to be goofy and make fun of comedy zombie films (see “parody“).  For me this was an unexpected film and looked like what films of this sort should be — fun to make.  It made me feel like I was watching Fido for the first time again.

free candy
Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown, Ph.D. – a student of all sciences and the inventor of the first time machine built out of a DeLorean
Christopher Lloyd
If you don’t recognize this guy it’s Christopher Lloyd playing a high school senior in 1958

Give this blood-soaked adventure horrorcomedy a watch — it’s an unexpected fun zombie-demon flick from Canada, great for a laid-back kick-back chuckle with friends.

Written by Tim Doiron and directed by April Mullen, it stars a bunch of folks I’m not familiar with and presume are Canadian along with Christopher Lloyd — who I will always think of as Emmett “Doc” Brown.  88 minutes long, this is the first ever live-action, 100% Canadian feature film to be shot in Stereoscopic 3-D.  Filmed in 20 days in and around the Niagara Falls region of Canada in 2011, it features occasional adult humor and it achieves being a fun film without revealing adult body parts frequently found in zombie films.

I rate Dead Before Dawn — drum roll pleaseGreen Ooze!  Maybe moderately green, but definitely green — good job Canucks!

Links

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

It seems that this is a review I lost with my hard drive crash nearly 2 years ago.  Here’s news — you’re not missing anything — nothing in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and nothing with my review.  If a film doesn’t register with you, it’s hard to review it — so what would you read from that?  ANSWER – me, annoyed.

Anyway, I’m working from memory here, so let’s get started…

Colour Rating — Yellow Puss or Red Blood … whatever …

I haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, I have had no plans to, and after this film I am further not interested.  It’s amusing that Seth Grahame-Smith could write a quirky parody mashup (published 2009) combining the 1813 Jane Austen‘s classic novel with elements of modern zombie fiction, but mostly I just found it snooty and boring — I couldn’t get in to it.  When they showed the action stuff, it worked for me, but all otherwise it was the whos-in-love-with-whom Jane-Austen-junk my mother warned me about.

Not a gore-fest, this Z-film was a SNORE-fest!

There was clearly a lot of money behind this film, and one good thing I can say about it is that I’m sure it will perturb the Jane Austen purists.  Hopefully, it will be at least a little fun that it was re-envisioned.  For me though, coming from the zombie-film fan perspective . . . something was lost with this to capture the the zombie-fan demographic.

Conclusion…

If you’re a Pride-Prejudice/Austen fan and you’re open-minded — go for it.  If you’re a zombie-fan and you want to make sure you’ve watched EVERY zombie related film, well … good luck.  If you’re a die-hard zombie-film fan …. don’t bother.

LINKS to help you sleep