ZOMBIE STRAIN REVIEW
“I was hoping it might get better as it goes along. Instead, it just got much, much worse.”
I love Edgar Wright’s zombie comedy, Shaun of the Dead, just as much as anyone else, and for good reason. Unfortunately, in the 20 years since that movie broke such great new ground in horror-comedy, so many others thought that it looked easy enough to copy the formula to create a number of far weaker attempts, and also, some very bad movies. That’s not to say that Zombie Strain is bad and that it can’t find its share of fans, but it is a very low-budget DIY movie that require a lot of patience before it just goes completely over the edge.
Directed by Michael Seabolt, Zombie Strain introduces us to two film school applicants, Charlie and Nate (William Mann, Cameron Vitosh), who are in the midst of filming their application videos. Throughout these introductions, we hear constant sex sounds, because in fact, they are making these videos from within Charlie’s studio where they make adult films. Soon after, a zombie invasion breaks out, and a few other friends join them with one of them, Zoe (Chandni Shah), finding a stash of pot that somehow allows her to walk among the deadly zombies unharmed. Hence, it’s dubbed “Zombie Stash.”
Written and produced by Greg Schroeder, this is a movie about (and seemingly for) Gen-Z-ers, although it’s hard to tell if the filmmakers are as young as their cast. It’s also hard to determine whether the film’s cast are real actors, since most of the performances make the movie seem more like a college drama class experiment than an actual film. At times, it’s unclear whether this was meant to be a sex comedy or a stoner film, but it never really commits to either, even as it takes a long time even to show zombies other than on the studio’s security cameras.
It’s pretty evident this is Seabolt’s first movie as a director, from how low rent the whole thing feels by mostly being set in one location, but feeling very much like something solely meant for VOD. The biggest problem is the writing and acting, as it introduces so many annoying characters, few of them who seem to get along very well, let alone any of them being friends. The film’s focus could have remained solely on Charlie and Nate, making it more of a bro movie, but the women in the cast, including India Jasiri’s Aaliyah and Emily Ashby as the porn star Autumn, give stronger performances across the board to make it far more palatable. That’s not the case with Chandni Shah’s Zoe, whose erratic and giggly performance seems more like an actor just delivering their lines with little direction or consistency and just acting overly silly.
At one point, we see a little girl being chased by the zombies who the group want to save – she appears one more time and then is seemingly forgotten. We never learn what happens to her. Even the titular “zombie strain” seems to be a plot device that really doesn’t carry through to anything significant, because so many unrelated ideas are being thrown into the mix – have I mentioned that the porn being made at the site has a holiday theme? – hoping that something clicks.
Even so, the movie’s worst infraction comes towards the third act when something happens between Autumn and Charlie that is such a horribly unfunny idea that is taken way too far and makes it impossible to forgive the film’s other issues.
There just doesn’t seem to be very much point to Zombie Strain – it isn’t funny, it’s not scary, and the characters are so unlikeable, it feels like it goes on forever despite barely being more than 90 minutes. The whole thing feels quite juvenile and amateurish. As much as I was hoping it might get better as it goes along, instead it just got much, much worse.
Rating: 3/10
Zombie Strain is now available via digital and VOD.