The October Zombie-Thon 2009 - Day 16: Flesh Freaks
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.16.2009
Nowhere is safe from the flesh freaks!! Well, at least not university basements.
FLESH FREAKS (2000)
Written & Directed: Conall Pendergast
Country: Canada
Judging by its melodramatic dialogue, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired score, and DVD cover art that is a clear rip-off…errr, homage of Lucio Fulci's Zombie, Flesh Freaks apparently considers itself one heck of a serious horror film.
It couldn't be more wrong.
The story concerns college student Barry (Ronny Varno), who is returning from a recent school trip to an archeological dig in Belize. Sounds like it was probably a great time, but the dig did uncover a zombie which promptly killed everyone but Barry. So, you know, that probably put a damper on the whole trip. Anyway, Barry is the only one who knows the truth of what happened there – the official story is that everyone was killed by terrorists. Barry takes great offense to this, but nobody ever said a zombie can't be a terrorist, so maybe he's overreacting.
Barry returns to campus to discover an overwhelmingly blasé attitude from others regarding his near-death experience. I would have thought your friend being the only survivor of a horrible massacre would be a pretty big deal, but apart from perfunctory "hey, are you alright" greetings, most of his friends seem remarkably un-phased by Barry's return. I don't know, it seems weird, but maybe it's just because they don't know anything about it. Once again, I would think what Barry went through would be a huge news story, but Barry's best friend Stan (Etan Muskat) only knows something happened based on a brief news article he just happened to come across on the Internet. Sucks for Barry – here he is the sole survivor of a nightmarish slaughter, and back home it's not even big enough news to make him a minor celebrity.
Then again, that probably suits Barry just fine, seeing as how he is clearly haunted by his experience, and doesn't really want to talk about it anyway. Eventually, though, Stan manages to pry the truth out of him through his sheer persistence (otherwise known as "annoyance"). Now, before I go on, let me take this moment to highlight the kind of unrealistic dialogue we're dealing with in this movie. Here is a brief bit from Barry's recounting to Stan of his doomed Belize trip:
"As we drove out from the airport to the site deep within the jungle, I watched the side of the road and saw our civilization, plants, and processing area gradually give way to the jungle. The trees, the vines, and the creepers seemed to gnaw away at our temporary brittle buildings, and the jungle seemed infinite and unstoppable…growing constantly. I wondered how many of our structures – or anything – would last against its incredible natural force…how those temples had survived so long."
If you asked your buddy to tell you about his trip to Belize, and he started talking like that, would you still be friends with him?
I guess that just shows what a great friend Stan is, because he sticks with Barry despite both his pretentious speech and seemingly wild tale of an undead killer. The latter, at least, turns out to be much easier to accept when similar zombies start popping up on campus also. It seems Barry has inadvertently brought back whatever caused the Belize zombie – although the movie avoids any explanation of how exactly he did so. No matter! The living dead have risen, and the entire campus is at risk!
Well, OK, maybe not the entire campus. More like just the basement of one building where the University morgue is located. But still, that's a big deal, right? So it's up to our heroes, Barry and Stan, to stop it…oh, wait, never mind. Actually, it turns out our real hero is Barry and Stan's classmate, Jane (Eshe Mercer-James). I would complain that Jane has been nothing more than a supporting character up until this point, but even calling her that would be awfully generous. Regardless, at this late-in-the-game stage, she ascends to main character status, for no good reason I can figure out. It's certainly couldn't be her acting ability – in a movie full of poor performers, Mercer-James is undoubtedly the worst. Unless, of course, she's trying to play Jane as someone who couldn't be more bored by fleeing from and/or fighting zombies. If that's the case, she might be one of the greatest actresses I've ever seen.
Besides the awkward shift in focus to Jane in the third act, there are some other major pacing problems with this movie. This is especially true in the film's zombie-free (except for Barry's flashbacks) first half, which feels like it goes on forever. Pendergast is clearly trying to pad out his running time…how else to explain moments like when Barry first arrives to the airport and finds that Stan isn't there to pick him up as planned. He calls a mutual friend, who informs him Stan has left and is on his way. So we watch Barry wait a little longer, and then Stan shows up. Wow! How exciting! I was really worried that Barry wasn't going to be picked up from the airport…all the way up until he was!
Likewise, minutes later we see Stan and Barry arrive at their dorm-room. Barry lies down in bed, and Stan tells him they should go out so that Barry can get his mind off things. Barry is hesitant at first, but agrees just seconds later, and the two head off. So why the hell did we need the scene in the dorm-room at all??
The film's other major pacing problem involves its over-usage of Central America footage. Now, in terms of getting the most out of a small-budget movie, I have to give writer/director Pendergast some credit. It seems fairly obvious that at one time he himself was in Belize (maybe even on the same sort of school trip Barry was on), and while there shot a bunch of the footage of the jungle. Whether he planned at the time to later include it in his own horror movie, I can't say. But it certainly wasn't the worst idea to write the film's story in a way that could incorporate this footage. The only thing is, we don't really need to see as much of the footage as we do. OK, we get it, you were actually in the jungle. We believe you. Now could you move on from this meaningless shot of a large beetle walking along the jungle floor?
But the biggest problem with Flesh Freaks is one of tone. I know was criticizing quite a lot of the movie in the description above, but the truth is none of the problems I mentioned would have mattered as much if the film was a little more self-aware. This is a movie that needed to plant its tongue a little more firmly in cheek. The dead serious tone it strives for is constantly undermined by the story and technical shortcomings. I mean, c'mon…this is a movie that reveals telepathic alien bugs as the cause of the zombies, and then depicts them with what are obviously hand puppets. There's no shame in indulging in your own cheesy glory. If the film had gone that route a little more, it might be easier to forgive little things like the uncovered zombie that has supposedly been buried for hundreds of years wearing slacks and a nice, crisp white button-up dress shirt.
With not much else going for it, Flesh Freaks at least offers some decent (albeit repetitive) gore, mostly consisting of nails and crowbars being driven through zombies' eyes. Sure, the zombie heads are clearly fakes, but I'm not gonna lie and say it's not a little fun to watch them get destroyed. Still, it's a long way to go just for a few moments of enjoyable ocular mayhem. I can definitely get more bang for my buck watching something like Fulci's Zombie. True, there's only one moment of eyeball destruction in that film, but at least I'm not spending the rest of the time watching the characters wait for their rides.
