Zombeer (2011)

Director: Drew Griffin
Stars: George Mulholland, Daniel Schurgin, Ulysses Mauricio and Jesse Denton

This film was an official selection at Phoenix FearCon V in Scottsdale in 2012. Here's an index to my festival reviews.

I'm hardly going to mount a complaint when a horror short kicks off with Dance of the Knights from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, but while its ominous overtones suit the feel of the opening scene, it doesn't play well with the rest of the film. As you might imagine from the title, which works well as a one word synopsis of the plot, it isn't a particularly subtle piece. In fact, it wouldn't go too far to suggest that this is pretty close to what I'd have made if I'd have found a movie camera and a few likeminded friends when I was sixteen. It's nine minutes of gore effects, heavy metal and beer. The humour is lowbrow, the philosophical hints even lower and technical quality obviously wasn't a high priority. There are movie posters galore on walls and a couple of homages to Bad Taste, or at least I read them that way. They were overt enough for instinctive quoting on my part. It's fun, but it's overdone and it gets old quickly.

I'm not sure which character is which, though there are only four and their imaginative names warrant mention here. The one with cheap sunglasses is Spud Krousensky, but I don't know if his guest in the neat Dark Tranquillity shirt is Dink Hefeweizenheimer, Chimmychummy Stoutington or Bjorn Reinheitsgebot. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that they apparently like beer and Spud's crazed roommate has been brewing up a vat of it that glows radioactive blue and is served in bottles with cool labels. He, like any sane beer lover, is offended that they're drinking Bud Light, so brings out a case of Zombeer and we get to watch them drink. A lot. These scenes run on far too long, perhaps just to allow for more crunchy metal while they foam at the mouth and go red eyed. The inevitable gory twist is neatly foreshadowed by the Anthropophagus poster on the wall. When I was sixteen, this would have been the greatest thing ever, but I grew up.