The October Zombie-Thon! - Day 5: Zombiez
Posted by Trevor Snyder on 10.05.2007
Because everything is hipper when you replace the "s" with "z."
ZOMBIEZ (2005)
Written & Directed by: Zachary Winston Snygg (ZWS)
Country: USA
When it comes to zombie films, I am not a demanding man. In fact, I think it's somewhat safe to say that I am often downright generous. Readers of last year's Zombie-Thon saw me give positive reviews to films like Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker and Zombie Death House, movies I freely admit would not be considered great works of art.
Still, even I have standards. Even the most relaxed critic should still have a set of rules and principles to live by. For instance, here's a simple one: Call me crazy, but I think a zombie movie should actually feature, you know…zombies.
I know, I know, that seems fairly obvious. But tell that to the makers of Zombiez, another entry in the recent "urban zombie film" subgenre, and one that makes the interesting and somewhat perplexing choice not to actually feature any of its titular monsters.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that Zombiez is being dishonest with its audience, or trying to pull the wool over their eyes. As far as I can tell, the makers of the movie actually believe their film does contain zombies, as evidenced by the film's early text which suggests the film will deal with the traditional, voodoo-based zombies that you just don't see too much anymore in modern horror films. Still, someone might want to let them know that the villains of their film, who appear to just be knife-wielding cannibals, don't quite fit the "zombie" classification. My first clue to this came when they taunted and laughed at the film's heroine. By the end of the film, when the killers are not only talking, but openly questioning their leader's plans, it's clear that these folks can not be considered zombies – no matter how lenient you're being with the definition.
So why am I even bothering reviewing the film, if it doesn't in fact deliver what the name promises? Well, I suppose it's only fair. Zombiez clearly believes it's a zombie film, and wants its potential audience to think so, as well. It sure worked on me, as I rented the film and watched the entire thing before realizing it wasn't quite what it was billed to be. So, to that end, consider this another Zombie-Thon public service – not only a review, but also a warning that if you bother with this mess, you won't be getting what you're almost certainly hoping for.
So what, then, do you get, if not an honest-to-goodness zombie flick? Well, it might be tough, but let me see if I can accurately describe the overall plot and action of Zombiez. Our heroine, Josephine, walks for awhile. She then sees some "zombies" kill someone, and the "zombies" chase her. She gets away, and then walks for awhile. The "zombies" find her, and then chase her again. She gets away, and then walks for awhile. The "zombies" find her….ah, you get the point.
Look, I'm not kidding about this. For much of its first two-thirds, the film's entire purpose seems to be following lead-actress Jenicia Garcia around with long, uninterrupted steadi-cam shots. Hey, Garcia is not an unattractive woman, and I won't besmirch director ZWS for his obvious love of her form. Still, though, I think if I was ZWS, I could have thought of a better use of my film stock, not to mention my audience's time, than to simply spend great lengths of time following Garcia around with my camera.
Of course, to be fair, the overabundant walking scenes are broken up by the equally overabundant chase scenes which, amazingly, manage to actually be slightly less thrilling than the walking sequences. Maybe this is because its obvious Josephine is never in any real danger of getting caught, which she herself must realize, considering that she never picks up her pace to go any faster than a mild jog. All the while, the "zombies" are always just a few steps behind her, and yet, astonishingly, are never quite able to take those few extra strides to catch her. It's a good thing these guys aren't real zombies – imagine how much slower and bad at their job they would be if they were also dead.
Oh, did I mention that nearly all of these walking and chase scenes are scored with the same redundant, simplistic two-note beat? If I didn't, it's because my brain is trying hard to block this memory, in order to erase this music from my head. And yet here I am, at the time of this writing two days removed from having watched the film, and I still can hear the score in my sleep. Considering it's so simple it's not surprising that it's easy to get stuck in your head, but it doesn't help that it's literally playing throughout almost the entire length of the film. At first it's annoying, then it gets kinda funny, and then it just ends up being maddeningly frustrating. Seriously, there are moments when the beat finally stops, but before you can be too thankful it simply kicks back in again 30 seconds later, leading one to wonder why it ever stopped in the first place.
Oh, yeah, before I forget, there is a plot, of sorts, but it's hardly worth mentioning here. Hell, the movie itself hardly finds it worth getting into until the film's final 20 minutes, when we finally meet The Dr. (Jakeem Sellers), the evil villain behind the "zombie" plot, who is using his cannibalistic army to run a meat pie company, and also spouts off some vague mumbo-jumbo about how what they are doing will help them take over the city. Or at least I think that's what he was getting at, but I wouldn't take my word for it.
Sellers is clearly having a lot of fun playing this character, and you might think the presence of an interested actor playing an actual motivated character might liven up the film's final act, but by that point it's already a lost cause.
Still, there is a bizarre moment where The Dr. plays an odd game of target practice with a man dressed in a chicken suit. I'm not sure I would go as far as saying the scene is funny (which is what it strives for), or even entertaining. But it's definitely…something. I guess that's better than the rest of the movie, which is 90 minutes of nothing.
As with any truly awful movie, there are a number of scenes that make no sense; moments that we are apparently expected to swallow without rolling our eyes (no luck there). Take, for instance, the lengthy sequence in which Josephine somehow ends up walking into a forest, despite the rest of the movie clearly taking place in a factory-filled industrial section of town (the film wisely never shows just how Josephine ends up in this forest, although one can only assume some sort of teleportation was involved).
Once in the woods, Josephine ends up fleeing the zombies yet again, this time with a well-dressed man living in a shack deep in the forest. Why is there a well-dressed man living in a shack deep in the forest? I dunno. Nor do I understand why, when he tells her how to get out of the woods, he doesn't just go that way too, rather than wander off to be found and eaten by the zombies. Later, an angry Josephine decides to fight back against the zombies by walking (of course) over to a crashed car and putting together a Molotov cocktail. How did Josephine know that this car would contain all the necessary elements to make a Molotov cocktail? Once again, I'm not sure – unless this film takes place in some sort of alternate universe where all cars are always equipped with empty bottles and extra rags.
But then, as one might gather from the rest of my review, it's not inexplicable moments like these that are even the biggest of this movie's problems. As a matter of fact, this movie is actually just one giant problem masquerading as a real movie. Writer/director Zachary Winston Snygg does not go by his full name here, instead choosing to be billed as "ZWS." In this case the use of a pseudonym was probably a wise one – perhaps it prevented him from being tracked down by anyone angry about having spent money to sit through this garbage.
