It seems like it should be common sense not to build a nuclear power
plant next to a cemetery, but in a predominantly white community where
the son of the police chief is an aspiring backyard wrestler, this
idea’s downside can be overlooked. The cemetery’s custodian has been
able to keep the reanimated corpse problem under wraps, but one night
the high school’s science fiction club just has to give their P.K.E.
meter a try, and the recently departed decide that they have to take
some kind of action against these meddling kids.
Not content with just terrorizing the geeks, and unable to ignore their
hunger, the undead decide to treat the town as a buffet, and the local
high school’s prom is the dessert table. Now it is up to a slacker, a
cheerleader, the class vice president, the yarder and the nerds to take
their town back, and prevent too many memorial pages from taking up
space in the yearbook.
Dance of the Dead is
a pretty down to Earth zombie feature. The story is very linear, so no
one will get lost, and the characters are of the same archetypes that
the audience cheered for in the John Hughes and "American Pie" eras
of high school comedies. Nothing about the movie is very foreign or
intellectually deep, and comes across as more of a PG-13 comic book
movie than a horror film. Thankfully, the messiness that comes along
with zombies prevents the film from taking itself too seriously and more
importantly tiresome.
There is not much depth to the characters, and since this film is not
trying to present a message about society (I think we have all grown
past the nuclear scare nonsense that Mr. Burns is the mascot for), there
does not need to be. If there was, this film would drag along and
forget about the necessities of a zombie comedy. A gut-busting scene
that is too intense for R rated zombie dramas, heroes who have fun
dispatching the flesh eaters, gore that is reminiscent to the 80's
movies, and hot zombie-on-zombie action. If there is any problem with
the story, it is that the characters seem callous at times because they
do not take much time to mourn, but that would waste time in a 95 minute
film that is determined to never slow down.
Dance of the Dead is
one of those great scripts that just needed to be shot. As long as the
effort put behind the gore and the actors just care enough, it should be
entertaining. Perhaps if it had a great director and budget behind it,
it would have the potential to be as fun as "Zombieland", but then it may have also lost the charm of being an excellent B-Movie in an overly A-Movie world.hellhorror.com |
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