Descendents.

Long before George Clooney played an upset widower, in “The Descendants”, there was a terrible Chilean movie called “Descendents” about a mysterious virus turning everyone into zombies.  Obviously the two have nothing to do with one another, but I really didn’t know how else to introduce a Chilean zombie movie that promises to be absolute garbage.  Have fun, kids.

[...]

[Kid narrates, describes the zombie apocalypse, a montage of children’s drawings show the evolution of the world.]

Starkwell: If your kid draws people vomiting blood, it might be time to get them some help.

Lovelock: Or lock your doors, ‘cuz LOOK OUT.

[Apparently the kid is immune and needs to find the ocean (?)]

Starkwell: Wait, is she dancing with a mermaid?

Lovelock: Why does her mom want her to go to the sea?  Dumb plan.

Starkwell: And… she’s supposed to find the magical octopus there?

Lovelock: I’m confused.

[It gets worse.]

[...]

Another montage shows the kid being experimented on, and show her seeing her mom get eaten, and… yeah, now she’s all alone on the beach or something.  They cram a lot into a super schizo intro.  And then it quiets down and we follow Camille, the young girl, as she wanders the wasteland alone.

[...]

[More young girl walking and narrating.]

Lovelock: If this whole movie is this girl walking around and telling us how lonely and hungry she is, I might lose my shit.

[...]

The good news, the movie is only about an hour and ten minutes.  The bad part, so far, it really is mostly just shots of the girl walking around and narrating a shitty screenplay.  Occasionally there are shots of her running away from soldier people… the zombies themselves don’t really scare her because she is immune to them and they don’t attack her.  But yeah, at a few points some army dudes are chasing her and her other immune children friends and trying to shoot them.  Not sure why.  There are a lot of flashbacks of when the world went to shit, but it doesn’t really explain anything, or really go anywhere.  Plus they keep repeating the same flashback, basically.  The zombie eating people parts are decent enough, and it’s nice to see someone tryng to do something different, but the problem is, it really wasn’t much of an idea at all.  Also I hate it.  Man fuck this movie.

[...]

[Ten minutes of a bunch of kids playing in a playground.]

Lovelock: I thought George Clooney was in this…

Starkwell: Why are they speaking English?

Lovelock: This movie blows.  So hard.

[Army shows up and starts shooting the kids.]

Lovelock: Well, at least that.

Starkwell: Wait, why is the army hunting children… and zombies?

Lovelock: I’d appreciate if the girl would stop having the same fucking flashback over and over again.  WE’VE ALREADY SEEN THIS.

Starkwell: HOLY SHIT, yeah we get it, you want to get to the sea.

[...]

Then the kids find the sea and there is a giant octopus that is swatting down the helicopters.  THEN THE GIRL TURNS TO THE CAMERA AND SHE AND HER FRIENDS HAVE TURNED BLUE, GROWN GILLS AND HAVE WEBBED FINGERS AND SPARKLE LIKE DIAMONDS.  Yes.  That happened.  Lovelock straight up passed out after trying to make a joke that simultaneously referenced “Avatar”, “Twilight” and “Waterworld”, and ran out of air.  When he came to, he legit screamed  “THE SMURFS” and then started speaking in tongues.

[...]

[After the credits, it tells us, through the worst fake news broadcasts EVER FILMED, that ten years ago GLOBAL WARMING… caused this?]

Starkwell: And… so…

[No, seriously, you don’t even know how bad the fake news broadcasts look.  The guy is reading his lines off of a piece of scrap paper, and one of the ‘broadcasts’ looks to be in someone’s wood paneled basement, and another one looks like they filmed it in a bar.]

Starkwell: Wait.. so…

[Seriously, this goes on for ten minutes.  After the credits.  Ten out of seventy minutes are after the credits.]

Starkwell: WHY IS THERE AN OCTUPUS WHY ARE THE KIDS SUDDENLY MERMAIDS??!?!?!?!

[...]

It’s one of the most frustratingly bad movies I’ve ever seen.  Must be seen to be believed.  That being said, don’t see it ever.

Cockneys Vs. Zombies.

There have been more than a few zombie comedies made in the wake of “Shaun of the Dead”, and to be completely honest, none of them ever hold a candle to it.  This is the third film that I can think of that involves criminal types, in England, trying to avoid death by zombie.  If you expand outside of the UK, I can think of even more.  It was like people watched “Snatch” and “Shaun of the Dead” and thought, “I bet I can combine those and make a SUPER MEGA MOVIE”.  Try and guess if any of them has been right so far.  Moving right along.

[...]

[Construction workers find a tomb as they destroy a building, a skeleton rises up and eats them.]

Lovelock: Serves them RIGHT.

[Terrible intro music plays.]

Starkwell: Strong start, however… would have been stronger with a stronger song.

Lovelock: Seriously, why don’t these movies ever go full metal, instead of weak poppy punk?

Starkwell: And I could have done without the fart joke... one minute into the movie.

[...]

[Two idiots plan a bank robbery.]

Lovelock: If these guys pull this off, I’m going to live where they live and I’m gonna rob banks.

Starkwell: That’s a lot of wrong.

[...]

Clearly someone watched a lot of Guy Ritchie movies.  In fact, they even got that old dude from that Guy Ritchie movie to play the two dumb bank robber brothers’ grandfather.  Anyways, it is fairly well written.  The jokes all work.  The old people are funny and the dialogue is quick and entertaining.  It seems like the same crew that opened up the zombie tomb is about to tear down the old folks home where the granddad is living.  So the idiot brothers actually want to rob the bank to get the money necessary to save the home.  Pretty adorable.

[...]

[Montage of their robbery plans, and they go pick up a bunch of friends and family.]

Lovelock: I love a good caper.

Starkwell: I feel like there is probably some stuff being lost in translation here.

Lovelock: The film is in English!

Starkwell: Is it?

[...]

The gang manages to rob the bank, but didn’t realize that the silent alarm was tripped, so they were cornered.  Meanwhile the old folks’ home is overrun by zombies.  Simultaneously, lucky for them, zombies have overrun the town, so the cops that had them cornered have all been eaten.  The zombies aren’t bad looking, and the effects, overall, are as convincing as they need to be.

[...]

Starkwell: I prefer when people don’t refer to zombies as zombies in a zombie movie.

Lovelock: Yeah, that’s one of the golden rules.

Starkwell: Can there be more than one golden rule?

Lovelock: I think so.  Another one is to stop asking so many fucking questions.

Starkwell: These people say ‘muppet’ way too much.

[...]

There’s a scene where one of the gang drop kicks a baby.  It actually is kind of funny.  What isn’t funny is how one of the gang (the girl) already knows all of the zombie rules, and knows to shoot them in the head, and knows that a bite will turn them, and so on and so forth.  However, there was a pretty sweet Christopher Lee reference at one point.

[...]

[Super dragged out chase between a zombie and an old guy with a walker.]

Lovelock: Now THAT’s a good joke.

[...]

Though not as effective as the old folks’ action scenes in “Hot Fuzz”, it’s still pretty funny to watch old people fight zombies.  But that’s the main problem with the movie... It does a lot of different things, but doesn’t do any one of them quite as well as the movies that they are borrowing the ideas from in the first place.  That being said, so far it is still entertaining as Hell.

[...]

Starkwell: I feel like there are a lot of underdeveloped ideas here.

Lovelock: You’re underdeveloped.

[...]

It’s true. I mean what Starkwell said, not Lovelock... For example, they spent all of this time setting up that the building company left money at the bank, and then they ended up actually stealing that money and all of this… but in the end, who cares?  Everyone is dead, including the building company… so why did they bother?  Do they even need the money anymore?

[...]

[The surviving members of the Gang Of Stupid find... an armory of some kind and load up like Rambo (?)]

Lovelock: Lucky for them there’s a double-decker bus that she can hotwire?

[Then one of the characters used the Indiana Jones “no ticket” line when they shoot a zombie off of the bus, and it was super out of place and felt way forced and Lovelock puked a little in his mouth.]

[...]

Eventually they get to their granddad, and we all get treated to a montage of old people with guns killing zombies. A really long montage.  Longer than it needs to be.  It is still entertaining and fun, albeit really stupid.  In the end, the gang and the old folks (the ones that are left) make a clean getaway on the double-decker bus and then a ferry boat, but not before granddad sacrifices himself and Lovelock cries a little.  BUT WAIT HE’S NOT DEAD.  CANCEL THE TEARS.  Solid movie overall.  A touch short, but then again, it certainly didn’t need to be any longer.

Jason X.

Jason’s first appearance as a full on zombie in part six was actually not too bad at all.  There was then a steady decline all the way down into ‘Manhattan’ easily one of the worst things ever.  “Jason Goes to Hell” managed to be entertaining in a dumb, but still fun, kind of way.  At this point in Jason’s history, it is the tenth movie (Jason 'X'... get it?).  There is really nothing left to do, except make it be in space, for some reason, and also in the future?  I can’t wait to hear Lovelock and Starkwell rip this movie a new one.

[...]

[Some kind of first person view opening of doctors working on a corpse.]

Lovelock: So… Jason is Robocop?

Starkwell: We should be so lucky… Also, why would they be keeping Jason alive.

[Some Military Nerd Doctor wants to transport Jason to his facility… not frozen?]

Lovelock: Well now they’re just asking for it.

[...]

When they go to the room to find Jason, he has somehow gotten out of his chains and kills everyone.  Pretty awesome actually, since the characters all suck so far and we're all glad that they're dead.

[...]

[Nerdy Scientist Girl locks Jason in a cryogenic freezing something and he drives his machete into her… through the insanely thick steel/whatever doors, and then the WHOLE place freezes.]

Starkwell: Where does one get a machete like that exactly?

Lovelock: Hattori Hanzo.  Or science fiction.

[...]

Then the movie really takes a turn for the dumb when a crew from the future stumbles upon the “ancient” freezing lab.  No explanation is made as to why NO ONE between the present day and miscellaneous future four hundred years later ever went to check on the lab.  Also, there are androids?  The acting is as bad as the dialogue, which in turn, is as bad as the story.  The music is also terrible.  As are the costumes.  As are the sets (seriously, it looks like they went shopping at a "Star Trek: TNG" garage sale.

[...]

Starkwell: Why is the future seemingly made up entirely of horny teenagers making sex jokes and wearing skimpy lil' outfits?

Lovelock: I don’t know, but I sure hope I make it that far.

[...]

Then future dummies thaw out Jason and Nerd Girl from the beginning.  They heal the girl with their healing machine, and revive Jason.  Big mistake.  Then there was a stupid scene where a ‘student’ bones her professor.  And by bones I mean rides him while wearing lingerie and twisting his nipple with huge metal pliers.  Simultaneously, two of the other students bone.  And then one of the dudes does the android, or wants to anyways.  Starkwell got up to leave, but then Jason sat up on the bed and killed the dumb blonde.  So Starkwell sat back down, and decided to stay, at least for now.

[...]

Starkwell: I’m pretty sure Kane Hodder just took advantage of that scene to really feel up that girl’s titties.  He almost pulled her shirt off.

Lovelock: Wouldn't you?

Starkwell: Wait, what?.

[...]

There was a scene where professor brings Thawed Nerd Girl some food and tells her quite casually “oh by the way, Earth is dead, you’re on a spaceship heading towards Earth 2”.  After the requisite “'Earth 2' is a sick album" conversation, both Lovelock and Starkwell laugh non stop at the fact that her reaction to this news was basically “oh cool, show me around your space ship, I'm not in shock at all”.

[...]

[Jason kills people.]

Lovelock: ZZZzzzzzzzzzzz…..

[Starkwell straight up left and went to bed.]

[...]

There are so many characters.  Like in some of the other films, they don’t even bother developing any of them.  Why bother?  Since Jason just ends up killing them all... I guess.  Body count for the sake of body count.

[...]

[Jason kills more people.]

Lovelock: ZZzzzzzzzzz…

[...]

So, it doesn’t matter who they throw at Jason, even “bad ass” military types, and they all die immediately.   Lovelock said the movie really jumped the shark when the android turned her gun sideways to shoot Jason gangster style.  This movie is really bad.

[...]

Lovelock: No one noticed that Jason was “killed” on top of the healing bed/machine?  And now he’s a super Jason?  And it also created new futuristic armor and a new futuristic mask for him? The healing machine also heals things?  FuuuUUUuuuuck this.

[...]

The movie goes on for so much longer than it needs to.  Between this point and the end, they even manage to put Super Jason in the holodeck where he kills virtual reality campers.  Eventually Jason blows up fighting a black dude in a Halo outfit and then they ride each other down to Earth 2, from outer space.  Yes.  Really.  They set it up for a sequel which thankfully never happened.