The October Zombie-Thon 2009 - Day 14: Electric Zombies
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.14.2009
You promise electric zombies, you better deliver electric zombies. Or at least ZOMBIE zombies!
ELECTRIC ZOMBIES (2006)
Directed by: John Specht
Written by: Richard M. Novasak & John Specht
Country: USA
"What is that?"
"It's one of those things."
"They come in electric, too?"
"They do now."
- Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Man, Gremlins 2 had it right. Looking to top the first film, the sequel upped the stakes and introduced a whole slew of new special gremlins, like the electric one mentioned above. It's kinda like how I thought Electric Zombies, looking to top the numerous zombie movies cluttering the shelves, was going to up the stakes and introduce, well, "electric zombies." With a title like Electric Zombies, it didn't seem out of the question.
But no, this is not a movie about zombies made of electricity. Nor is it about zombies with electric powers, zombies controlled by electricity, or even zombies in electric robot bodies. Any one of those movies would have been awesome. Electric Zombies, on the other hand, is nothing more than a festering boil of cinematic garbage.
No, I take that back – not because it's too harsh, but because you can lance a boil and eventually forget all about it. The mental scars of Electric Zombies, though, will be with me for the rest of my life.
Now, let's get right to it and address the biggest problem with this turd of a movie – not only is it not about "electric" zombies, but it's not really about zombies at all. Sure, I suppose you could argue this point. I've been awfully lenient with the whole "zombie" definition in the past, and I'll admit that brain-washed masses – allegedly the threat here – can technically count as zombies of the non-living-dead variety. But for me to comfortably give this movie that much credit, it would require a hell of a lot more of those brain-washed masses than what we get here.
That there aren't more of these brain-washed masses is pretty damn unforgivable, considering the film's "story" – and that may be the loosest usage of that word ever – concerns a secret government program that uses cell-phone signals to turn everyday citizens into mindless killers. Now, if you come to a movie called Electric Zombies that has a plot like that, you probably expect the to see the program get out of control at some point, right? Maybe to see hordes of uncontrollable assassins accidentally let loose on an unprepared populace?
Well, guess again, sucker. Cause Electric Zombies isn't interested in giving you the obvious turn of events…even if, as in this case, the obvious turn of events is really the only interesting way to go. So instead of the program leading to unbridled mayhem, we get one scene where everyone in a video-store is forced to shoot each other (wondering why they all already had guns when they went in the store is probably pointless), one scene where a hooker is forced to mutilate herself with a knife, and just a couple scenes where, yes, folks are turned into actual assassins – not exactly the sort of all-out anarchy needed to sell the horror of the situation.
The rest of the film's uncomfortably long running time is filled with numerous scenes of people talking, and talking, and talking…which would be bad enough, but is even worse when you factor in the movie's dreadful sound quality, which renders about 80% of the dialogue damn-near unintelligible. Then again, considering the dialogue I did hear, that might not be such a bad thing. Take, for instance, the way-too-numerous scenes of government figures patching into the program's satellite and sending orders with code-speak like "one, three, seven, four, order, take-out, no MSG, no fortune cookie, Jehovah, tonight, end." Why did the filmmakers think we would want to watch scene after scene of that?
Of course, at least those scenes actually have to do with the brainwashing plot, which is more than I can say for the massive amount of screen-time given to Detective John (who in both voice and appearance reminded me a little too much of Bubba Ray Dudley). John is ostensibly the film's "hero," and he does get involved in the government cover-up near the film's end. But before that, a substantial amount of time is spent just watching him meet undercover with various pimps and drug dealers – scenes that, as far as I can tell, have absolutely NOTHING to do with the rest of the movie. What's even worse, everyone involved in these scenes also talk in a cryptic manner. I guess it's trying to be a realistic portrayal of the short-hand street criminals use around one another, but it comes across as if you're watching a retarded version of The Wire. Between this perplexing dialogue and the fact that I couldn't hear most of it anyway, I often had absolutely no idea what was even going on in these scenes. I'm not exaggerating – even after watching the entire film, I'm still not sure 100% whether John was a crooked cop or just deep undercover. And the same goes for his best buddy, who is a pimp, but was also an undercover cop. I think. I don't know.
Look, I realize I'm not doing a great job summarizing this movie, but that's only because I really cannot explain what the hell was going on in it. This is one of the most incomprehensible films I have ever encountered, and the impenetrable labyrinth that is its story is only further marred by an overwhelmingly embarrassing presentation. Besides the aforementioned sound quality, the picture is also pure shit, with many shots so poorly lit and framed that you almost feel like the director was going out of his way to avoid showing us his own movie. And for a movie concerned with "brainwashed assassins," it's relatively light on bloodshed; what little there is not surprisingly unconvincing and unmemorable (except for the moment where a "happy ending" done with acid causes a crooked senator's penis to fall off onto the bathroom floor – the unfortunately lone trashy-fun scene in a movie that desperately needed more of them).
Meanwhile, the editing is beyond awful. If you told me it was done by either a four-year-old or a mental patient, I might understand – no, actually, even then I'd expect stronger work. The editing here makes watching the film feel like some sort of controlled LSD experiment. Scenes don't so much end as they just suddenly fade out. Hopefully the characters are at least done talking when this happens, but that's not always a guarantee. Then there are the weird moments that feel like they were left in from either a longer cut or just a completely different movie altogether, like the strange cut-away to one of John's fellow cops crying over the drug addiction his undercover life has caused. This is the only time we see this character in the movie. He never comes back. What's more, the cut-away to him doesn't even really add anything to the other scene going on at the time. So why the hell is it even in here? WHY? Then again, at least that was something resembling a character moment – some of the unexplained cutaways are so random and nonchalant that I thought I was suddenly watching somebody's old home videos…until I remembered that nobody's home videos are this boring.
So the question is, if the film is this bad and doesn't even really feature zombies, then why am I bothering to review it in Zombie-Thon? Well, for the very fact that is is this bad and doesn't even really feature zombies, of course. Like I did with Zombiez before, I'm considering this a sort of public service announcement, a chance to make sure none of my fellow zombie-fans have to suffer through the same sort of mind-rape I endured with this movie. Don't be fooled by the filmmakers' claims that this is a modern combination of the political thriller mixed with the horror genre. It's more like a modern combination of constipation and diarrhea. And no, I don't really know what I mean by that, but it's still about as good a way to describe Electric Zombies as I can think of.
