The October Zombie-Thon 2009 - Day 12: American Zombie
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.12.2009
I don't know which is more annoying - the Burning Man festival, or a Burning Man festival for zombies.
AMERICAN ZOMBIE (2007)
Directed by: Grace Lee
Written by: Grace Lee & Rebecca Sonnenshine
Country: USA
Given the recent surge in popularity of both the zombie movie and the "mockumentary," I suppose it was only a matter of time before filmmakers got around to merging the two. Can't say I blame ‘em – the idea is rife with potential, as the quasi-apocalyptic nature of a zombie plague is just the kind of wife-sweeping, multi-character event/story that documentarians would certainly love. A movie like American Zombie just had to come along eventually.
Then again, the world of American Zombie is not quite your typical cinematic zombie apocalypse. In this world, a virus known as R-428 has indeed introduced the living dead to the world, but these are not all the brainless, shuffling monsters of horror movie fame. That kind of zombie does exist (or, at least, we are told they do – although the movie oddly never explores this area), and are known as the "ferals." However, the majority of zombies – or "Revenants," as they prefer to be called – fall into two other categories. Low-functioning revenants can be trained to do simple, repetitive tasks, therefore making them perfect manual labor (especially since they do not require sleep). High-functioning revenants retain a human personality, and can often even pass for living before the inevitable signs of decay start showing up.
Obviously, something like this would just be begging to have a movie made about it, and up to the task of making that movie are Saturday Night Live writer John Solomon and documentary-filmmaker Grace Lee (director of the acclaimed The Grace Lee Project), both playing themselves here to lend American Zombie a bit more meta-realism. The two old friends decide to chronicle the lives of four high-functioning revenants = Ivan, a slacker convenience-store clerk; Lisa, a spacy florist obsessed with finding out who she really was (revenants have no memory of their pre-death lives); Judy, a businesswoman in severe denial about actually being dead; and Joel, an equal rights activist in charge of the Zombie Advocacy Group (or ZAG).
The documentary starts to hit a snag, though, when it becomes more and more clear that Lee and Solomon are looking for different things from it. Lee, a true documentarian, wants to simply film these individuals and let a quiet character-study about the problems revenants face emerge. Solomon, on the other hand, wants everything meticulously planned ("we don't use storyboards in documentaries," admonishes Lee), and is clearly going for a more sensationalist approach. For instance, he just can't resist asking their subjects if they secretly dine on human flesh. "Are there flesh-eating zombies," one revenant answers. "Well, let me ask you this – are there flesh-eating humans?"
Tricky answers like that can't dissuade Solomon from his belief that the dead are up to something, and as far as he is concerned, the proof can probably be found at Live Dead, an annual Burning Man-like festival in the desert where revenants go to relax…no humans allowed. Grace would love to film the event as well (for less suspicious reasons than Solomon), and thanks to their association with Joel, the two are actually granted permission to attend. Once there, they find…nah, I'm not gonna spoil it.
As mockumentaries about zombies go, American Zombie is quite good…for awhile. There are a lot of interesting ideas in here, and the film is at its best when exploring the little day-to-day details of a zombie's life and the challenges they face. Sure, there are the obvious concerns about stereotypes, and the rough adjustment back into the living world after first being resurrected. But there are other major issues that you don't normally see in a zombie movie, but are completely plausible in the somewhat-realistic universe of this film. For instance, how difficult it is for the revenants to obtain money. "It's impossible to get credit as a zombie," one laments.
Like the best mockumentaries, the humor and concepts here are used to subtly satirize and/or bring attention to real-life issues, and one doesn't have to look too hard to see American Zombie's allusions to all-too-real bigotry, sexism, ageism, and class warfare. But, truth be told, a little of this goes a long way. This story might have worked better in a short film, as that would have forced the filmmakers to concentrate on one or two main ideas and laser-focus in on them. Stretched to feature-length, the movie seems to have a little too much on its plate. This leads to some ideas not only be short-changed, but also to others being completely ignored. For example, we see a revenant having her rotting sores treated by a New Age-y "holistic fusion practitioner," but all this does is beg the question of what kind of medical treatment real doctors and hospitals offer the living dead? That seems like a fairly large topic not to broach. It would be understandable to ignore it in a short, but it's one of several issues conspicuous in their absence in a movie trying to come across as a serious, all-encompassing documentary on what the living dead go through.
So while quite a few scenes are undeniably intriguing, the movie never really meshes together into a cohesive whole, and starts to peter out long before we finally get the Live Dead sequence. And, unfortunately, the Live Dead sequence is the slowest in the movie – you'll probably already be feeling a little bored by that point, but you can't help but think that this will be where the movie finally picks up again. After all, they've been talking about trying to get into this thing for the whole movie, and it seems fairly obvious that here we'll finally learn whether there is any truth to Solomon's fears. Well, yeah, we do get some answers, but first we have to slog through what feels like endless festival footage. It's like someone you knew went to the actual Burning Man, filmed everything, and then wanted to show it to you.
Still, I'll give the movie its due – the stuff that works works very well. It's a little tougher to complain about a movie being a hodge-podge of effective and ineffective material when the effective material is as fun as it is here. I mean, I really liked quite a bit of what this movie had to offer. There's some great stuff – like when a Reverend is asked to defend the zombie prayer group he has formed, and responds "Jesus was the original zombie." If only the movie had been a little more focused (and not so content to meander around in the last act), it might have been something really special. As is, it's good, but has a general "nice try, better luck next time" feel to it. American Zombie hints at the complete potential of a zombie mockumentary, without quite fully delivering on it.
