Dead Within.

This movie has five people listed as cast members.  There are four people listed as writers.  There are two people I know, that are very much not excited to watch a movie about a few people stuck in a cabin, hiding from zombies that, as far as I can tell from the interwebz, we will never see.  Let’s go already.  At least it’s only an hour and twenty minutes long.

[...]

[Credits open with aerial shots of landscapes and cities.]

Starkwell: I hope they didn’t pay too much for that stock footage.

Lovelock: Or for the helicopter ride.

Starkwell: The pilot was like “hey stop filming”.

[...]

Four friends, composed of two couples, hang out in their cabin, and there’s a baby.  It cuts from them celebrating to DARK and SCARY clearly after the outbreak.  There are people asking to be let in to their cabin, they don’t let them in.  Zombies eat the people outside.

[...]

Starkwell: Kind of shitty that they didn’t even think about letting them in, and now they’re just listening to zombies kill them.

Lovelock: And why do the zombies sound like dinosaurs from “Jurassic Park”?

Starkwell: You know, other movies have incorporated dinosaurs…

Lovelock: That’s my go-to for dinosaur sounds.

Starkwell: Also, why didn’t the people just try and break down the door?

Lovelock: Hold on to your butts.

[...]

The director does a fare job at creating tension, but it’s really slow.  It’s moving at a snail’s pace.  Every now and again, there are flashes of one of them killing their friends after they, obviously, must have become zombies.  Where’s the baby at?  Also, I guess since they don’t want to attract zombies, they whisper, mostly.

[...]

Starkwell: I guess the zombies mostly come at night?

Lovelock: Mostly.

[...]

The guy goes out on errand runs, but they don’t ever show that since that would take an actual budget, and more than two actors.  There are two actors in this movie, holy shit.  TWO.  And mostly it's just the girl being crazy alone in the cabin.  Like that Robert Redford movie, except not on a boat, and not Robert Redford.  And nothing happens even though there are ZOMBIES.

[...]

[The two share a cigarette and some synth music plays.  And then MONTAGE of them living in the cabin, surviving.]

Starkwell: So… this movie could have only been twenty minutes?

Lovelock: Try five.  SOMETHING HAPPEN.

[...]

I get it, it’s intense being cooped up in a cabin, having nothing to think about but how you killed your best friends and your baby.  BUT DON’T MAKE A NINETY MINUTE MOVIE ABOUT IT.

[...]

[The girl starts going kind of crazy.]

Lovelock: That’s it, lady… wash the clean dishes again.

Starkwell: More like, that’s it, MOVIE.  Show it again forever.

[...]

The troops are getting restless.  The actors are quite good, actually.  And it’s well directed and nicely shot.  But FUUUUUCK nothing is happening.

[...]

[The guy never comes back from his latest errand run.]

Starkwell: So, something happened, we just don’t get to see it... or?

[Girl has fucking CRAZY NIGHTMARES.  And then the front door starts bleeding… or at least it does in her mind.]

Lovelock: Well, at least we get to see that.

Starkwell: I appreciate that it’s more about her descent into madness than the zombie outbreak itself, but I’d like some kind of action… otherwise it needn’t take this long.

[He has a point - feels like a short stretched to a full.]

[...]

Near the end, we do finally get to see some zombies as they finally breach the cabin and the girl fights for her life.  Lovelock and Starkwell sat quietly on the edge of their seats.  For all the complaining about nothing happening, they certainly seemed gripped at the moment.  Definitely a slow burn kind of movie.  Takes a while to get there, but when it does, it makes you feel fairly uneasy as shit falls apart around the main character girl.  And she falls apart too.

[...]

[Guy comes back but she doesn’t let him in, because he can’t remember the secret knock.]

Starkwell: Woah.

[He tries to bust in with an axe, she cuts off some of his fingers with some branch cutters.]

Lovelock: Woah, gore!

[She knocks him out with a baseball bat and ties him to a chair.]

Starkwell: So… is he a… zombie?

[It becomes clear that he is not a zombie, and that the bitch is NUTS and maybe a zombie.]

Lovelock: Bitches be crazy.

[...]

What an emotional roller coaster.  She stabs him in the chest.  She sees black zombie blood, but I think it’s all in her mind?  We see red blood.  A bizarre ending to a bizarre little movie.  TWIST!  Her blood is black!  She’s the homicidal crazy rabid zombie!

Dead Creatures.

This is one of those zombie movies from the turn of the century that went entirely unnoticed, since, at that time, no one (present company excluded) gave a shit about zombie movies.  Especially not ones that were trying to do something a little different.  That being said, that it went unnoticed doesn’t necessarily make it bad.  So this might be an undiscovered gem.  Or it could be undiscovered for a reason.  We’ll know soon enough.

[...]

[British guy, acting like a cop takes a teenage punk hostage and seems to be getting ready to torture him.]

Starkwell: If he is a cop, his methods are quite unorthodox.

[Cut to a group of women getting stoned and talking about sex and wieners.]

Lovelock: Thems are some seriously British teeth.

Starkwell: And some pretty serious mom jeans... which seems like even in the early two thousands should have already been out of date.

[Then it cuts to one of the girls feeding some horrible looking bleeding face girl some kind of miscellaneous meat.]

Starkwell: WHAT in the FUCK.

Lovelock: Is any of this gonna be explained?

[Cut to one of the girls ripping off some meat from… HUMAN LIMBS.  Like hands and legs.]

Lovelock: I repeat.  EXPLANATION?

[So these ladies are all eating human.]

[...]

Then one of the girls mentions that it is starting to smell so she takes a sack filled with what’s left of the dude they were eating and throws it into someone’s backyard.  Lovelock and Starkwell are confused and feeling seriously unsettled.  Apparently the punk locked up in the cop’s basement has been there a whole week?  Insane.  There is no real explanation for what is going on, really.   Then there’s a guy who kills a girl and eats her, so I guess the cannibalism thing isn’t solely happening to the ladies.  I’m lost.  Starkwell and Lovelock are lost.  I think maybe the writer director was as well.

[...]

[One of the girls gives a guy a blowjob for twenty bucks, and then kills him and takes him back to eat him and share with the gang.]

Starkwell: Wait, why did she bother to give him the blowjob if she was just gonna kill him and eat him?

Lovelock: And a condomless one at that.

[I don't think these ladies are worried about catching anything, since they appear to be, zombies.]

[...]

Then there’s a scene where the guy that was eating people takes his shirt off and he has a huge cut on his stomach like he had been gutted.  He then duct taped it shut.  So… now it's much more clear... these people are all zombies.  Still so confused, though.

[...]

[Two girls saw (like saw as in CUT) a random dude into pieces and cry a whole bunch and then pray (as in to God).]

Starkwell: This is certainly very different than the norm.

Lovelock: Are there any heroes in this movie?  The whole thing seems centered around a bunch of decomposing cannibals.  Are we supposed to feel bad for these bitches?  I don't.

[...]

The gore is pretty great and very, as I've said, unsettling.  It cuts from a girl having tea and biscuits with her grandma to the cop guy sawing a guy’s head off, or girls picking guts out of a carcass.  The only complaint the guys have at this point is that not a whole lot is actually HAPPENING other than people eating people and turning all gross and decomposey.

[...]

[The virus clearly spreads by bite and/or scratch.]

Starkwell: They are EASILY the least rabid zombies ever.

Lovelock: Like slacker zombies or something.  “Come here, let me hit you on the head with a hammer gently, thanks darling, oh look you’re dead.”

Starkwell: Even the people that die don’t make a sound when they get killed.  “I’m dead.  Bummer dude.”

Lovelock: Also… EVERYONE in this movie mumbles.

[...]

All of a sudden, Lovelock and Starkwell realized that the cop guy was a zombie hunter.  Hence sawing off a dude’s head, or driving a rod through their brain, or asking the punk about eating people.

[...]

Starkwell: Oldest, most crotchety, zombie hunter ever.

Lovelock: Seriously, zombie hunting is supposed to be a young man’s game.

[It’s become clear now, also, that he isn’t a cop, but a guy looking for his daughter (?), killing zombies along the way.]

[...]

So, I GUESS the zombie hunter guy is the hero.  Anyways, the guys are getting a little bored, as it is quite slow moving, but they both agree that in a way this was a bit ahead of its time.  The writer/director’s previous film was essentially a mockumentary about one guy’s slow descent into zombieness after being bitten… so he clearly likes to try to present the subject in a more ‘real’ and different way than expected or previously done.  Kinda neat… but we all agree the pace sucks.

[...]

[Turns out the zombie hunter’s daughter was the decomposing zombie girl from the beginning.  He finds out when he tortures one of the main characters.]

Lovelock: Wow.  It all comes full circle and yet, BORES THE SHIT OUT OF ME AT THE SAME TIME UGH SO BORING.

Starkwell: Snoozefest.

[After zombie hunter gets his daughter’s history, he kills the girl.]

Lovelock: Well, at least he’s thorough.

[He throws his tools into a lake.]

Lovelock: Wait?  What? No? If you don’t keep killing them who will?  Ugh, this movie.

[...]

Then the new girl shows up at the hooker’s place and they eat a dude.  The end, immediately.  So… um… yeah.  Great on paper, but quite boringly executed.

Primal.

This relatively recent picture is a zombie film by way of “The Crazies” with a bit of a ‘slasher in the woods’ vibe mixed in for good measure.  From what I can understand, it is an Australian film, so if nothing else, Lovelock will probably enjoy the accents.

[...]

[Flashback to 12,000 years ago, a caveman writes on a wall.]

Lovelock: That’s some pretty fancy feathers he’s wearing on his head... for a caveman.

Starkwell: He’s drawing on a wall.  Clearly he’s more of a dainty caveman.

Lovelock: Pfff… artists.

[He’s attacked and eaten (?) by a rabid caveman.]

Lovelock: Now THAT’s a caveman.

[...]

Anyways, then with the magical magic of film magic, it zooms ahead to the present day, and some young adults are traveling through the Australian wilderness, looking for the paintings that this caveman did, all so that some dude can get a PhD.

[...]

[There’s some guy in the woods killing rabid people with a machete.]

Starkwell: Wait, so they’re driving in the day and this guy is simultaneously killing people in the woods at night?  That’s just bad editing.

Lovelock: Maybe that’s more 12,000 year old flashbacks.

[I’m thinking maybe the slaying happened the night before?  Not sure.]

[...]

They find a tunnel that goes through a mountain that apparently leads to the drawings.  The main girl gets spooked while walking through the tunnel and nicks her arm on a rock.  The blood hits the ground and seems to AWAKEN THE EVIL.

[...]

Lovelock: Man, I can’t wait for the evil to take over and make them all eat each other.

[Blonde girl and nerd start doing it in a tent.]

Lovelock: Well, this is alright I guess.

[...]

Doesn’t take much longer to get going.  With a fairly short runtime, it makes sense.   Anyways main dude kills a killer bunny, and Lovelock made at least seventeen Monty Python jokes.

[...]

[Blonde girl goes skinny dipping.]

Lovelock: This movie certainly is milking the whole dumb blonde thing.

Starkwell: Skinny-dipping.  Alone.  In the Australian wilderness.

[She has leeches all over naked body.]

Lovelock: Well that’s one way to get some booby into the movie.

Starkwell: Sex scene and skinny dipping.  A great addition to the actress' resume, no doubt.

[...]

They develop main girl character a little.  She has the typical “crazy ex-boyfriend locked her up in a basement and tried to kill her (?)” baggage.  Comic relief guy seems to be nice.  Anyways, other than the Dumb Blonde and her Nerd boyfriend, the characters actually are fairly alright.  And then Dumb Blonde goes RABID. Slowly, grossly, and wickedly...  And the crowd goes wild.  There’s also some kind of mini bugs that seem to be eating things, like their tent… and their tires!

[...]

[Since they can’t drive, they plan on WALKING Rabid Blonde back to the nearest town on a stretcher.  At night.  Through the forest.]

Lovelock: So that’s their plan?  Build a stretcher?

Starkwell: What would you do?

Lovelock: I'd hit her with a rock until she stops wiggling.

Starkwell: Remind me never to get sick around you.

[The sun comes up.]

Lovelock: It took them all night to build that shitty stretcher?

[Blonde goes FULL RABID, with sharp teeth and eating a bunny.  Then she attacks the group.  PhD Dude attacks her face repeatedly with a shovel.]

Starkwell: Jesus.  I guess the PhD Dude is taking your approach?

Lovelock: Yeah but it's too late.  Spent all night building a stretcher he'll never use, instead of spending all night bashing her head in with a rock until she stops wiggling.

Starkwell: The 'wiggling' thing is creeping me out lots.

[...]

Then they show Rabid Blonde tackling a kangaroo and eating it.  It looks really fake and bad.  Plus the way she screams is super annoying.  At this point the movie turns into a montage of them setting up traps for their now rabid and homicidal friend.  It’s alright I guess.  Lovelock says he would prefer if there was more eating and less planning.  Admittedly, it’s over halfway through the film and we’ve only seen one rabid camper?  Not exactly the outbreak we were all hoping for.

[...]

[They trap her momentarily, but she escapes and takes a huge bite out of Comic Relief’s neck.]

Lovelock: That’s what I’m talking about.

[Later that night she comes back to the camp and drags Comic Relief away to finish eating him, and throw the carcass in the cave.]

Starkwell: Wait, is she feeding the cave?

Lovelock: I don’t know, but it certainly is all quite PRIMAL.

Starkwell: No good.

[...]

Then PhDude starts to turn and the remaining three draw straws to see who will kill him.  They seemed to not want to kill the Blonde, but now with him, he hasn’t even turned and they want to immediately knife him?  Starkwell straight up starts laughing at the movie.

[...]

[When only the Nerd and Main Girl remain, Nerd decides to fight back!]

Lovelock: So Nerd grew a pair?

[Bad ‘hard rock’ music kicks in.]

Starkwell: Like that helps.

[Nerd dies.  But also kills Rabid PhDude?]

Lovelock: Win-win as far as I am concerned.

[...]

So now Main Girl has to go in the cave, which she was already afraid of before there was a demon girl hunting her.  Now there seems to be some kind of tentacle or long tongue thing following her around (?)…  She runs into the other girl who is apparently still alive but… pregnant with a demon baby?  Other Girl dies, after stabbing herself in the uterus and carving out the demon fetus...  Main Girl is pinned down by the tentacle-tongues, and then some kind of Jabba the Hut creature comes out from the depths of CGI and tries to rape her repeatedly.

[...]

Lovelock: ...

Starkwell: ...

[...]

[She gets away… miraculously (?)… runs out of the cave and bashes Blonde Girl’s head in with a rock… ROLL CREDITS.]

Lovelock: Well at least they finally went with the rock.

Starkwell: So who was the guy with the machete at the beginning cutting up people?

Lovelock: If they had just listened to me before...

Starkwell: And just because she left the cave… why would that make her safe?  What is the evil just turned off now?

Lovelock: Hey, what were those swarms of flies eating things earlier in the movie?

Starkwell: And… and… just… FUCK THIS MOVIE.

[...]

One of the laziest endings ever.  Complete with bad CGI.  Hooray.

Mimesis: Night of the Living Dead.

This is the fourth film that Starkwell and Lovelock are watching that isn’t “Night of the Living Dead” that manages to have “Night of the Living Dead” worked into the title somehow.  None of them have been good yet, so I don’t expect this one to be.  This one is apparently about a group of horror fans who somehow end up in a recreation of the original film.  Yeah… I don’t know.

[...]

[Farmer in his farmhouse walks by an old TV playing a trailer for “Night of the Living Dead”.]

Starkwell: Soooo the film DOES exist in this universe, they’ve established that…

[Farmer goes upstairs and finds a bunch of zombies eating his wife.]

Lovelock: Wait… what?

[Opening credits are creepy, and show horror fans in costume at a horror con… in slow-mo.]

Lovelock: Cosplay IS fucking scary…

[Sid Haig speaks at the convention, playing himself (?)…]

Starkwell: Sid Haig is in this?  Hasn’t he been in like three or four of the movies that use the “Night” title in the title?

[So he’s not playing himself, I guess he’s playing a director guy.]

[...]

Main characters Russell and Duane get invited to some creepy party by a Goth girl.  Russell, the nerdy guy, is reluctant, whereas Duane, the black cool guy, wants to go and hook up with the Goth girl.  There has been some totally decent dialogue so far, much to everyone’s surprise.  Then they get to the party and there’s dancing and a horrible soundtrack that sounds like it was written by people who only listen to Rob Zombie.

[...]

[Duane passes out while peeing and a voice says “WAKE UP TIME TO PLAY” then it cuts to Russell passed out in a cemetery.  He wakes up next to a girl he met at the party.]

Starkwell: Wait, they’re dressed exactly like Barbara and her brother!

Lovelock: Wake up time to play?  What in the fuck was that?

[Russell is eaten.]

Lovelock: So… he isn’t a main character after all.

[Duane runs into Fake Barbara and joins her in the farmhouse.]

[...]

Duane goes and gets Russell, who is bleeding out, and brings him to the farmhouse.  They’re obviously straying a bit from the storyline, but Starkwell and Lovelock are definitely curious to see where this is going.  Who drugged everyone and dressed them up like the characters in the movie?  What are those things eating Russell?  And Starkwell just realized that Duane, who is basically Ben, is named after the actor who played Ben in the original.

[...]

[They meet a couple with kids and some young dude, hauled up in the basement.]

Starkwell: I’m nervous, because I really like this so far, and I’m wondering how they’re going to fuck it up.

Lovelock: I don’t know, but I feel like it’s around the corner.

Starkwell: Maybe it will involve Sid Haig.

Lovelock: I hope those are real zombies… somehow.

[...]

Duane fights a guy, who looks like the Crow armed with a pitchfork.  He kills him.  Then the bald guy with the daughter hot wires the truck and it explodes.

[...]

Starkwell: The soundtrack is distracting.  They should have gone much more subtle.

Lovelock: What’s with the zombie in clown makeup?

[...]

Anyways, the zombies are in the house now, and it’s all pretty by-the-numbers people surviving, and killing clowns with pitchforks.  They run across a dude in the house who tells them the truth, that there is a group of crazy dudes who like to re-enact horror movies.

[...]

[The dude is killed, tells them that there are six or seven of them.]

Lovelock: Wait, so the zombies are just people, or the crazy people behind this are able to turn people into zombies… or?

Starkwell: This might be the breaking point we spoke of earlier…

[The movie just jumped the shark for Lovelock.]

[...]

[So the zombies are actually just crazy people pretending.]

Starkwell: Wait, even when the zombies were stabbed in the back they just fell over and moaned… like zombies… that’s some serious dedication… and pain tolerance.

Lovelock: They suffer for their art.

[Suddenly they aren’t acting like zombies, they’re just going after Judith who just got thrown out of the house by Duane and Other Guy.]

Starkwell: Also, how did they tear that guy’s arm off… humans pretending to be zombies shouldn’t have super strength... yet somehow... ?

Lovelock: Also, how are they eating people raw and not vomiting.

[...]

[Sid Haig explains what MIMESIS is.]

Starkwell: Wait, they kidnapped Sid Haig too?

[Their plan is apparently to blame the whole thing on Sid Haig.]

Lovelock: I liked it better when we didn’t know what was going on.

[...]

Eventually some of the characters kill all the crazies.  There’s even a scene where Duane stabs a guy in the nuts.  Lovelock was hoping for REAL zombies, not dudes being zombies, but nonetheless, this is LEAPS and bounds above crap like “Night of the Living Dead 3D” or “Reanimation” or “Resurrection”.  As a remake, it is still well below Savini’s 1990 remake, but at least it does something interesting and original.  It gets a lot of points for that.  As a zombie movie, it is, well, not a zombie movie at all, really.  Oops.

[...]

Starkwell: Wait, why was the farmer's wife being eaten at the beginning?

Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering.

I think at this point there are eight of these films.  That puts this one smack dab in the middle of the series, and right at the beginning of Naomi Watts career.  CLEARLY a high point.  This one is more "Village of the Damned" than really a "Children of the Corn" thing in that regular kids get sick and go homicidal.  The film starts off with a woman's nightmare about a kid going all possessed zombie style and slashing her with one of those scythe thingies.  After the credits, we see an insanely young Naomi Watts driving into town, heading back home to visit her family and help with her crazy mom.  Her name is Grace.

[...]

[Farmer Joe takes water out of a well, that appears to have a zombie kid in the bottom.]

Starkwell: The well doesn't look that deep, can't he see that undead blue dude?

[He drinks from his bucket, oh no, it's a bunch of bugs!]

Lovelock: At this point, he's either the victim of some mystical magic, or this is all very Magoovian.

Starkwell: You're not doing the Magoo thing again.

[Zombie kid rises out of the well, kills the farmer, say he's "come for the children".]

Lovelock: Seems like a missed opportunity on the farmer's part to be all "but I'm not a kiddddd…".

Starkwell: Well, I think the zombie kid realizes that.

Lovelock: Unless he's blind.

Starkwell: Don't...

Lovelock: MAGOO-STYLE.

[...]

Looks like the zombie preacher kid is about to infect all the kids in town with the evil spirit.  Looks like Grace's sister and brother have a hot ass fever.  Looks like some shit's about to go down.

[...]

[It wasn't enough that Preacher Kid killed the farmer, he chopped his head off, impaled him on a cross of some kind, and now sets him on fire.]

Starkwell: He's taking his time with that farmer.

[The kids all FLIP THE FUCK OUT simultaneously, fever, convulsion, and then, they seem to go back to normal... or at least they SEEM normal.]

Lovelock: Well, that wasn't so bad.  Is the movie over yet?

[...]

[The kids kill their first victim.]

Starkwell: Did they really have to kill the only black woman in town first?

Lovelock: Kids are racist.

[The Sheriff suspects the husband, IMMEDIATELY and arrests him.]

Lovelock: Racist town I guess.

[...]

[Sheriff follows kid into cornfield, dies.]

Lovelock: That's why I never follow weird kids into a cornfield. At night.

Starkwell: Seems like an obvious thing to avoid doing.

[...]

Then there's a scary thing that happens and Grace wakes up… it was only a dream.  Then something scary happens.  But then she wakes up… it was another dream.  Within a dream.  Right…  It has now become clear that the kids are being possessed by the evil kids from, what I assume, is the original story / book / movie / thing.

[...]

[Crazy twin kids kill doctor.]

Lovelock: I already find twins terrifying enough without them being homicidal possessed demon kids.

Starkwell: Agreed.

[...]

The story moves quickly enough, though predictably.

[...]

[Girl talking to Grace drops a reference to cinematic classic "The Exorcist".]

Lovelock: Why do movies feel the need to do that?

Starkwell: I never know man.

[...]

After the typical "the two random oldest women in town tell the the story of the preacher boy" scene and a few more deaths, we find out that Grace's sister Maragaret is actually her daughter!

[...]

[TELEKINESIS! Flying scythe! Into woman's face!]

Lovelock: Preacher boy IS Darth Vader.

Starkwell: I hate you.

Lovelock: Wait so is her brother also her kid?  If not then her crazy mom had a kid at roughly the same time as her.  What the hell.

[...]

All the zombie kids gather in a barn and start the ceremony where they intend on transferring Preacher Boy's soul into Margaret's body.  Seems like it worked, since Margaret's body went into a bath of blood and Preacher Kid popped out… so…

[...]

[Grace fights Preacher Kid.]

Lovelock: She is totally pulling off that shotgun.

Starkwell: Are you smitten?  You seem pretty smitten.

[...]

Eventually she sprays Preacher Kid with mercury laced water and he melts.  The logic as to why that worked was flawed, at best, and the fact that her daughter wakes up after drowning in blood for ten minutes makes even less sense.  Oh well.

[...]

Starkwell: See, I'd buy it more if she just magically woke up… but the fact that Naomi Watts did CPR on her and THAT woke her up… seems FUCKING DUMB.

[...]

After the movie ended, Lovelock realized that one of the main kids grew up to be on the hit television show "Glee" and was mad at himself for missing potential jokes throughout.

[...]

Lovelock: There were probably like seven good moments to whip out a "Don't Stop Believin'" reference.

Starkwell: Missed opportunities.

The Bay.

With zombies being all the rage, it’s only a matter of time before more “serious” directors start throwing their hat in the genre ring.  Much like with comic book movies, eventually the market will saturate, even with the big names in the mix, the mockbusters will cease, and we can get back to people making zombie movies for all the right reasons.  Until that day comes, we’ve got to keep hoping that some of the major zombie productions might hold up against the real classics.  “Wag the Dog” is one of Starkwell’s favorite movies, so let’s see how Levinson does in this setting, facing two of the genre’s toughest (not really) critics.

[...]

[Stock footage of dead aquatic creatures washing up on the bay shore.]

Starkwell: Wait, this is a found footage movie?

Lovelock: You just figured that out?  Real Rain Man, dude...

Starkwell: Dude.

[...]

The story slowly starts off with a talking head shot of a girl explaining what happened that day in Anytown Maryland.  It was a festival of some kind, and she narrates as they show a bunch of cheap looking digital footage that people have submitted.  I’m assuming something bad will start happening soon.

[...]

[News footage of two scientists that were found dead in the bay, from “shark” bites.]

Starkwell: The production budget looks… well… are we sure this is THE Barry Levinson?

Lovelock: We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Starkwell: No.

Lovelock: GooOOOOooood MORNING VIETNAaaaaaAAAaaam...

Starkwell: I guess.

[...]

There was a whole conspiracy involving the mayor and his dumping of chicken shit into the bay.  The mayor seems sketchy.  There was a whole water treatment thing, that clearly isn’t gonna have worked as intended.  Lovelock said “better be zombies.”

[...]

[HELL starts breaking loose, people start getting sick, vomiting and breaking out into hives and disgusting bubbly sores.]

Starkwell: Ew.  Fucking, ew.

Lovelock: That’s why I only drink bottled water.

Starkwell: That’s just not true.

Lovelock: That’s why I don’t go to Maryland?

Starkwell: Sure, I guess.

[...]

The film is a bit schizophrenic in its approach to found footage.  It is a mix of talking head shots, random people’s home videos, doctor cameras video taping patients, COPS style ride along videos, iPhone FACETIME… a bit of everything.  It keeps t interesting, but Lovelock really wants more shit to happen.

[...]

Lovelock: What is this a flu epidemic?  Make with the zombies, yo.

[...]

Apparently someone was found dead with their guts torn out.  So Lovelock is even more at the edge of his seat waiting.  Starkwell likes the building of the tension.

[...]

[Weird creature crawls out of a fish mouth and bites a fisherman.]

Starkwell: Well that’s different.

[Lovelock threw up the muffin he was eating.]

[...]

Seriously though, there are a lot of fish gut shots.

[...]

[Two teenagers jump into the bay and get… eaten?  By… piranhas?]

Lovelock: Zombie fish?  Fucking… let’s fucking go already.

Starkwell: Patience.

Lovelock: You’re patience.

Starkwell: What?

[...]

All joking aside, this is moving pretty slow.

[...]

Lovelock: Yeah, we get it.  There’s bacteria in the water.  GO SOMEWHERE WITH IT.

Starkwell: I hate to agree with you but…

[...]

We are just past the halfway mark, and what we know is what we knew in the first five minutes.  The mayor/chickenfarmer has been dumping chicken poo and pee into the bay and the water is fucked.  What ISN’T CLEAR is if there is going to ever be anything more than puking people with blisters.

[...]

Lovelock: This shit looks CHEAP.

[Honestly, it does sometime look like something you could put beside shit like “V/H/S”.  Weird since Levinson IS an Oscar winner after all.]

[...]

Then we get to HEAR some pretty crazy shit through “ENHANCED AUDIO”.  It’s a neat and cheap way to have crazy shit go down without having to spend the effort to actually film it.  I believe it was Starkwell that shouted “LAZY”.

[...]

[They repeat a bunch of the footage from earlier.]

Starkwell: Really?  We’re THAT dumb that we don’t get it yet?  I need to have it read back to me like I’m some kind of child?

Lovelock: I’m still concerned that it’s not about zombie zombies.

Starkwell: Is that all that matters?

Lovelock: Dude, isn’t it?

[...]

Anyways, the whole town dies, and then the government covers it up.  Zombie movie?  Not really.  Infected?  Kind of.  Any good?  Basically, no.

Strange Behavior.

Another mad scientist pick from the eighties, this one revolves around kids being turned into killers.  It’s been done a few times before, and a few times since.  The issue, usually, with this type of premise is that kids are usually terrible actors and annoying to watch.  So movies, even with a good story, end up being a mixed bag.  I’m sure this will be no different.  I’m pretty sure this may not have a good story either.  The movie opens with a teenager at home alone.  The lights go out and someone kills him, I THINK.  We only see it happening in a shadow. It is the cheesiest looking and sounding death that Lovelock or Starkwell have ever seen and heard.  This is really setting the stage for one wild affair.

[...]

[Single dad and his son, Pete, do their morning routine together and have breakfast.]

Lovelock: Who stands naked in front of their dad like that?

Starkwell: What’s with all of the first person view shots?

Lovelock: Is that old woman the maid?  The place is filthy!  Fire her.

[There were more questions, but I’ll stop for now.]

[...]

As is usually the case with cheap and shitty eighties films, the high school students appear to be played by mostly actors in their twenties and thirties.  Maybe even forties.  I guess there goes my concern about 'annoying kids'.

[...]

[Students watch a creepy film with a scientist who controls a chicken.]

Starkwell: What the hell kind of high school class is that?

Lovelock: Home economics?

Starkwell: They’re not cooking the chicken.

[...]

Then the ‘kids’ go to a costume party at someone’s house, and they all dance to a shitty imitation E.L.O. song.  FOR A REALLY LONG TIME.  There’s even a choreographed part.  It’s kind of creepy to be honest.  In between dancing shots, it shows a hand grabbing a knife from the kitchen drawer.

[...]

Starkwell: Still dancing.

[...]

Lovelock: Still dancing.

[...]

[Dude in a creepy mask kills some teens with a big ol’ knife.]

Lovelock: Obviously where the “Scream” movies got ALL of their ideas.

Starkwell: Uh… ?

[Dude takes mask off after he gets away, it’s the guy from the opening scene that was ‘killed’.]

Lovelock: Wait… is that the guy from the beginning?

Starkwell: No, I think that’s the guy that killed the guy in the opening scene.

Lovelock: I’m confused.

[I’m confused.]

[...]

So Pete apparently works part time at some kind of research lab where they make little kids ride exercise bikes and then play pinball if they pedal for long enough.  He’s there to be a test subject for experimental drugs.

[...]

[Pete takes a behavior modification drug that will enhance his senses and make him a super human.]

Lovelock: It’s like that Bradley Cooper movie, except not as bad.

Starkwell: Harsh.

[...]

Then we get back story on Pete.  He goes on a date and seems to have SUPER SENSES.  Then he bones the girl.  Then some old maid lady finds a dead boy at the house she’s looking after.  But wait the killer is still there!

[...]

[The killer, some young girl this time, that we have never seen, kills the maid.]

Lovelock: Why was she cutting the boy’s hands off?

Starkwell: I’m sure we’ll never find out.

[I’m confused.]

[...]

[Pete goes back to the lab, and they’re injecting him with some shit, and strapping him in  a chair “Clockwork Orange” style.  They inject him IN THE EYE.]

Starkwell: Why would this lab even exist?  Without anyone calling the POLICE?!?

Lovelock: The answer is MAKE BELIEVE.  Anyways, I’ll forgive all the dumbness due to that fantastically gross eye gag.

[...]

Then Pete wakes up and I ASSUME he doesn’t remember anything, since he seems quite calm and not wanting to call the cops.  If he does remember the eye injection and is acting this calmly, then he is, as Starkwell noted, “the biggest idiot in maybe the whole world”.  There’s a whole side story about Pete’s dad, who is a police chief, and APPARENTLY the mad scientist is some kind of super villain that Police Dad had hunted in the past.  Really.

[...]

Starkwell: WHAT A CONFUSING MESS, FUCK YOU, MOVIE.

[Pete pees blood, they show it.]

Lovelock: I don’t feel so good.

[Lovelock passes out.]

Starkwell: Confusing and uncomfortable mess.

[...]

[Police Dad finds a casket in the foundation of his house.]

Lovelock: Why was he looking for that?

Starkwell: I’m certain that I don’t know.  I’m not entirely sure that the film makers know either.

[...]

We do finally get the back story.  The Dad’s girlfriend explained the whole thing to Pete.  Pete seems to understand, I sure don’t.  I guess the Mad Scientist from the chicken video killed Pete’s mom years ago, while she was working for him.  The casket is still not explained.

[...]

[The drugs take hold of Pete, he follows his dad to the lab, and helps the Mad Doctor capture him.]

Starkwell: Why do we care, what the hell?

[Lovelock didn’t say anything.  He’s so confused that I think his brain is actually broken.]

[...]

So under the Mad Scientist spell, Pete cuts himself a couple of times.  Then Mad Scientist orders Pete to kill his father and, THEN PLOT TWIST, Pete stabs the Scientist and says “YOU ARE MY FATHER”.  So I guess Police Dad’s wife was a cheatin’ bitch and this movie plain sucks.  The end.