Zombie Honeymoon

I had picked up this week’s flick, Zombie Honeymoon, on the cheap at the used video store with a few others. When I was perusing the letter column at the end of Walking Dead #39, I was excited to see Robert Kirkman say “Zombie Honeymoon. GREAT film. If you haven't seen it, you really should. It's heart wrenching tho.” about this film. Well, this was actually a misprint, it looked like Kirkman was saying this, but it was actually one of his readers, so I was a little duped. Any who, Pablo (comments in blue) and I decided travel to the Jersey Shore and put up a do-not-disturb sign.

QUICK STATS

SUB-SUB-GENRE: Chick Flick

BEST ZOMBIE: Surfer zombie. The only other zombie in this film actually, but I like how he was dressed like the main character, foreshadowing what is to come. He reminded me of the Italian school of zombies

QUOTES: “All I’m trying to do is kill as few people as possible before we get on that plane tomorrow!” – Danny
“Is there any tofu in there?” – Danny

INFLUENCES/REFERENCES: ROTLD3, Zombie (video store clerk was wearing a T-shirt for this), Dead Alive

IS IT SCARY? No

PAIRED COCKTAIL: Champagne to toast the newlyweds.

REVIEW

This is a film that seeks to personalize the experience of being a zombie, much like the British film I, Zombie. As you can guess, this is a film about newlyweds on their honeymoon and the husband becomes a zombie. It reminded me of the relationship between the main characters of Return of the Living Dead III. This film hinges on the couple; their believability makes or breaks this film. In the opening scenes you really get a sense of them being in new love, both actors are very sincere. But when their storybook romance starts popping stitches, you feel like your watching a soap opera, which is not too surprising since Graham Sibley, who plays the husband, Danny, has appeared on Days of Our Lives and The O.C. The big moments between them tend to consist of shouting matches followed by trite professions of love. You like these characters at the start of the film, but as you get further and further in, your interest runs cold and you don’t feel anything for them as the horrific stuff starts. I think these actors couldn’t play happiness very well but could do the tragic and inner turmoil stuff.

The other characters were even less impressive. Tonya Cornelisse playing the Maid of Honor struck me in the first scene. She was loudmouthed and screamed without any type of intonation in the first scene, but was so in a really quirky way. But when she shows up later in the film she has none of that quirk. There was also the creepy police officer Carp (played by Neal Jones), but he didn’t push the character very far. There have definitely been much creepier cop characters.

This film was a “Showtime Original” (which technically wouldn’t make it an ‘independent,’ but I bet you Showtime picked it up after the fact) and the camera did a good job of giving that soft core Red Shoe Diaries feel. It all looked very ‘made for TV.’ Most of the shots were handheld, which is a tricky style of cinematography, and I can’t really explain why I like it in some projects and not in others, but it got old for me in this. Although I did like it when they referenced Dead Alive with a shot of a piece of the husbands face dropping into his soup at dinner.

The editing got a little excessive with the montages. To be considered a feature film a movie has to be at least eighty-eight minutes long (this is important for festival entries) and I think a lot of these montages where put in to help the film reach that mark. For crying out loud there was a driving-to-the-store montage, not a going-into-the-store-and-shopping montage, just driving emotionally and listening to what I gather was a greatest hits of Lilith Fair CD. These extraneous montages did absolutely nothing to advance the plot or develop the characters.

The dialogue quality was horrible with volume levels all over the place. We were turning it up at parts just to turn it back down in the next scene. It sounded like they were using the audio recorded on set instead of recording additional dialogue in post. The music was all done on a synthesizer like many of the other films we’ve watched, but it didn’t bother me. It didn’t impress me either.

Zombie Honeymoon has an incredibly slow pace for a zombie film and it feels like forever before you get to the stuff that all us gore hounds love. When we do get to the bloody stuff, it’s all done very well, but there’s not a whole lot of violence, and it certainly doesn’t redeem the effeminate nature of the movie. Too little, too late.

So what did work in Zombie Honeymoon? Well, there was some tasteful side-boob. I did like the husband’s gradual progression in zombie-dom. The unadorned nature of the Jersey shore seemed to reflect the purgatory-like nature of their degenerating marriage.

I think this film could have redeemed itself at the end, but the climax was as disappointing as the rest of the film. There’s a big fight scene which was well done, but then we have to wait another ten or so minutes before the actual climax of the story, and the climax itself was nothing special and had lost all the momentum from the fight. And then after the climax, another montage!

So I won’t rely on (not) Robert Kirkman’s taste in zombie films anymore (he would like a zombie film that was all talking). This film was too internalized and tragic, and couldn’t deliver in the areas that this kind of story relies upon, sympathy for the characters and pacing.

1 out of 5 on the decomposition scale.

© D.L. Noah 2007