segunda-feira, 9 de novembro de 2015

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse review: 'cheerfully shameless'

Crass, gore-soaked fun reigns in this energetically puerile horror comedy

When zombies inevitably roam the earth, baying and groaning as they stagger malignantly in search of fresh meat, the first thing they will take apart is… our punctuation?
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is shy of an apostrophe but not much else: this in-your-face horror comedy, in the formulaic tradition of Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead, has little desire to keep either grammar sticklers or the PC brigade on side. What it does have is plenty of crass energy, along with rotting brain matter, to fling up on screen.
Just one zombie is let loose, in a slapstick laboratory opening, and soon the small town of Deer Field – just down the road from Haddonfield, Illinois, where Halloween was set – has a creeping epidemic on its hands. Unlikely hero duties fall to a trio of teenage scouts – the sweet one (Mud’s Tye Sheridan), the boorish one (Logan Miller), and the tubby, ginger one (Joey Morgan), who has trapped his two buddies in a sheepish hell of scouting far too late into adolescence. David Koechner is their tragic scoutmaster, a toupee-wearing bachelor who has secretly stuffed his house with Dolly Parton memorabilia.
To diss the film this puerile is like hitting My Little Pony right on the head by calling it a bit girly. It’s sort of the point. The lads are stricken with yearning for a grotty local strip-club called Lawrence of Alabia, and get tips from a super-cool cocktail waitress (Sarah Dumont) in trying not to seem so desperate. They man up, and arm up, at the hardware store, so that the effects team can really go to town, with baseballs being fired through undead skulls and a rotor-blade severing jugulars.
Sophistication is a lost cause, but Christopher Landon’s direction is nothing if not cheerfully shameless, and at least two of the main trio – Sheridan and Morgan – invest their friendship with a bit more sincerity than strictly required. The best jokes are hypothetical. How would you tell if an entire houseful of cats turned undead? Or, for that matter, Cloris Leachman? The 89-year-old’s cameo as an evilly furious neighbour has the air of a drinking-game forfeit, but she’s a good sport for honouring it.

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