Reviewed by Kevin Scott, MoreHorror.com
Zombie Night (2013)
Director: John Gulager
Writers: Richard Schenkman, Keith Allan, Delondra Williams
Cast: Anthony Michael Hall (Patrick), Daryl Hannah (Birdy), Alan Ruck (Joseph), Rachel G. Fox (Tracie), Shirley Jones (Nana)
If you’ve read the cast, you might think that it’s 1986 again. It’s not, but Zombie Night could be right at home on a video store shelf represented by one of those weird videocassette boxes with no bottom. What I really love about the Asylum is that they are really comfortable about the films they make. Say what you will, but I’m still convinced that somewhere some brilliant, hyperactive kid is taking all these movies in, and in twenty years, he or she is going to direct some grindhouse and horror masterpieces of their own.
The Asylum’s films could be the muse for the next Tarantino or Rodriguez. You just never know. “Zombie Night” had a Halloween release last year, which endears it to me even more. Now days, all that might be coming to the horror masses on Halloween is another “Saw”. Maybe some kid was fortunate enough to have made a lifelong memory of watching this on or around the day of Halloween, and thirty years from now they are going to remember it as way better than it was, and try to find it on the internet in its entirety, or buy a slightly less than pristine copy of it at a horror con. That’s what being devoted to horror movies is all about, Baby!
“Zombie Night” begins with three separate scenarios that will eventually converge with one another. Hang on and pay attention, it can get confusing. Patrick (Anthony Michael Hall) and his daughter get trapped in the caretaker’s shack at the cemetery when the zombies start to come to life. We get some really good scenes of some zombies digging out of their graves “Thriller” style, that would have caused me appreciate the film somewhat, even if it would have derailed thereafter.
Birdy (Daryl Hannah), Patrick’s ex wife and his daughter’s mother is at home with her geriatric mother (Shirley Jones) when everything begins a zombie apocalypse downward spiral. I love Shirley Jones, but I hated to see her play a character almost as annoying as Franklin from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. She speaks in incoherent sentence fragments, and probably could have benefitted from some medical marijuana to turn the volume down a bit. It didn’t change my opinion of Shirley Jones, or become the deal breaker for enjoying this film, but she was greatly underutilized.
Lastly, we have Joseph (Alan Ruck), and his family, who have a panic room to hide out in. Joseph’s son, Perry is Patrick’s daughter’s boyfriend. Joseph is wearing some strange windbreaker/sweater hybrid jacket that makes him sketchy to begin with, and to top it off, he doesn’t like to share. He turns Patrick and his family away, but karma deals him some zombie troubles of his own. It’s an obvious, but very nice nod to Harry in the original “Night of the Living Dead”.
I’m always telling you guys to appreciate something for what it is. It’s the optimist’s spin on lowering your standards so that you are never disappointed. “Zombie Night” is a cool little movie. The effects aren’t bad at all, and I liked the retro casting. Since Asylum films are getting sequels these days, I wouldn’t mind “Zombie Night 2”.