'Walking Deceased' more gross-out than clever
Mini-review: “The Walking Deceased”
“Did humor get killed off with the zombie apocalypse, too?” Sheriff Lincoln asks.
“No,” replies Boston, a guy he's just run into. “I think it died about five seconds ago!”
Actually, it died exactly 10 minutes and two seconds earlier when Scott Dow's zombie parody “The Walking Deceased” began by sending up the AMC series “The Walking Dead” before exploding with references to zombie movies, including George Romero's “Dawn of the Dead” and Jonathan Levin's relatively romantic “Warm Bodies.”
Imagine 14-year-old boys turned loose with digital cameras and some impressive, professional-grade zombie makeup effects.
Roughly, that's “The Walking Deceased,” not just a juvenile hodgepodge of gross-out humor tinged with homophobia, but a first-draft of a juvenile hodgepodge of gross-out humor, a self-congratulatory collection of feeble meta-awareness just dopey enough for adolescents to mistake for clever comedy.
Strippers on poles? Check.
Humans stupider than dead people? Check.
Mandatory utterance of the brainless cliché,“That was awesome!” Check.
The poster for this movie proudly proclaims “From none of the creators of the Scary Movies.” The Wayans brothers can breathe easy.
“The Walking Deceased” opens at the South Barrington 30. Rated R for drug use, language, nudity, sexual situations and extreme violence. 88 minutes. One-half star.
• Dann Gire's column runs Fridays in Time-out! Follow him at @DannGireDHFilm and on Facebook.