The October Zombie-Thon 2009 - Day 2: Johnny Sunshine
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.02.2009
For lovers of zombies and Suicide Girls who just don't have time for both.
JOHNNY SUNSHINE: MAXIMUM VIOLENCE (2008)
Directed by: Matt Yeager
Written by: Sean-Michael Argo
Country: USA
Johnny Sunshine: Maximum Violence is one of those movies that wants oh so bad to be an instant cult classic. It has a post-apocalyptic setting. Its characters dress in black leather bondage outfits. It's edited with flashy, MTV-esque effects. It's just like Repo! The Genetic Opera – only with 80% less style, 90% less talent, and 100% less singing.
The story goes like this. It's the future, and America has been devastated by a zombie plague. Thankfully, things haven't gone completely to hell. In a rare example of actually having their shit together, the U.S. government has managed to contain and quarantine the chaos. That's great news for everyone living outside of the quarantined zone…not so great for those stuck within the area, known as "the Sprawl."
Still, at least some within the Sprawl have figured out how to use the situation to their advantage. The slimy entrepreneur Max, for instance, has capitalized on the Sprawl's lawless nature by creating a highly-profitable snuff-film business. Max has become one of the most powerful men inside the urban wasteland by filming and selling videos of zombies being tortured and raped (uh-huh), not to mention good-old-fashioned torture and murder of living folk, too.
Max's biggest star is Johnny Sunshine, a sex-crazed and blood-thirsty androgynous female warrior in dominatrix gear (played by Shey Bland, whose own last name kind of beats me to the punch in terms of making jokes about her acting ability). Max's customers just can't get enough of seeing Johnny brutalize both the living and the dead. Her specialty is the aptly-named "kill-fuck," in which she viciously tortures and murders her victims while having sex with them. And you thought Sasha Grey was gonzo.
Now, if you're gonna bother watching Johnny Sunshine, you better enjoy these scenes of Johnny fighting and killing various humans and zombies, because that's almost all you're going to get. The movie has about 15 minutes worth of story spread out over an eighty-minute running time. The majority of the film is spent on looong scenes of Johnny wandering around the Sprawl, occasionally engaging in fist-fights with zombies, and torturing her victims (to be fair, a lengthy scene of her writhing around in bed is also thrown in for good measure). Perhaps sensing a need to liven things up a little, the filmmakers include a constant voice-over by Johnny, made up of emotionless dialogue meant to express how damaged she is ("I am a titan. I am a hurricane. I live for this.").
Here's the problem – if you're going to ask your audience to spend that much time watching the repetitive actions of one character, you better make that person pretty damn interesting. Unfortunately, cool name aside, Johnny Sunshine just doesn't cut it. Given that she gladly murders anyone she is told to with no remorse, Johnny isn't exactly a very likable main character – but even that could have been overcome by a more talented set of filmmakers. Johnny simply isn't remarkable enough to give a damn about one way or the other – you don't hate her, you don't like her…you just don't care about her. It's like they expected us to side with her just because of her Suicide Girls look. And I'm sure a certain segment of the audience will. But I can see hot half-naked girls in all sorts of better movies…you have to give me a little something more to work with here.
With about twenty minutes left to go, the movie finally realizes some sort of actual conflict might be beneficial, and so Max turns on Johnny, selling her out to a crooked cop in the hope that the rape and murder of Johnny Sunshine will be his biggest selling video yet. But don't let me fool you into thinking that things suddenly get exciting here. By that point, it's too little, too late. Even the admittedly hilarious sight of the cop attacking Johnny with a fly-swatter (no…really) isn't enough to save the movie.
Amongst its many other problems, Johnny Sunshine isn't nearly as shocking as I think it believes it is (or at least wants to be). Given its "snuff-film" plot and sociopath hero, it's clear that this is a movie that wants to live on the edge and thrive on pushing the envelope. But, quite frankly, it's far too inept to even come close to offending most viewers. The violence isn't all that gruesome (oh, sure, your granny might be appalled, but hardcore horror films won't bat an eye), the action scenes are horribly staged - hell, it's not even the first film to feature zombie rape.
And while it's not like I need even more reasons to complain, let me talk about what really pisses me off - Johnny Sunshine doesn't even need to be a zombie movie. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no story-based reason for it to be. The zombies here are little more than window dressing. You could tell the same exact story in any sort of post-apocalyptic setting. Hell, it probably doesn't even need to be post-apocalyptic – "the Sprawl" could just as easily be any city infested with crime and corruption (most of the time, it just looks like a slightly shady part of any major city).
If you eliminated the living dead from the story, all you would lose are the occasional Johnny vs. zombie fist-fights, an extended scene of Johnny torturing two zombies, and, of course, the zombie rape scene (something tells me that would be the scene the filmmakers would be saddest to see go). Other than that, it never really matters that there are zombies in this universe. They don't do anything to effect the plot in any significant way. They're not even presented as an ominous threat always looming in the background (at one point, a zombie simply turns and walks away from a potential victim, for no good reason I could figure out). They're just sort of…there.
Sure, I could have just eliminated it from this year's group of movies once I caught on to its ruse. But no, I want to make a point of this. The makers of Johnny Sunshine clearly threw zombies into the mix with the sole intention of riding the genre's current wave of popularity, tricking fans into watching their otherwise insufferable piece of crap. It worked on me, yes, but here's hoping I can steer the rest of you clear. I guess if you're a diehard living-dead fanatic with barely any standards, you might not be bothered by the relative unimportance or limited screen-time of the zombies here. Maybe their mere occasional presence is enough for you. For your sake, I hope so. For everyone else, though, you'd probably be better off just watching a real zombie movie while visiting the Suicide Girls website – I guarantee the results will be much more satisfying.
