Sometimes you just really need to watch zombies eat people.
Thus do you discover a 2013 star-studded Asylum Studios movie made for the SyFy Channel.
Quick Plot: The dead have risen on a warm evening in suburban California. Patrick Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall!) is trying to get his daughter Tracie and her pal Rachel over to his neighbors' panic room, but a detour leaves them trapped in a cemetery. Back home, wife Birdy (Daryl Hannah!) is struggling to stay calm with her dementia-ridden mom (Shirley Jones!). Their neighbors, the Maddens, are dealing with interior conflicts, stirring up dad Joseph's worst instincts involving the non-American help.
Yes, much like owning a yacht, the rules of cinema tell us that a homeowner with a panic room is probably a wealthy, racist jerk, and that's the case here. That would be Joseph Madden (Alan Ruck!), who locks his superstitious housekeeper inside and moves his wife and sons to safety.
Elsewhere in town, Officer Lopez does a terrible job of not saving anybody.
Welcome to Zombie Night! Directed by Feast's John Gulager (son of genre royalty Clu), Zombie Night is one of those mid-tier Asylum movies. Not a mockbuster, not an entry level CGI tale of random monster words mashed together, but an original(ish) story with modest ambition and an even more humble budget.
It's passable.
I grew up in the heyday of video store zombie scavenging, which (de)volved into very cheaply shot made-for-video-store-zombie-obsessed scavengers. At a certain point, anyone with a camera (and eventually just smartphone) could make and even sell their response to Diary of the Dead. I say all this to justify why Zombie Night, for me, a 42-year-old lifelong horror fan with an abundantly rich access to the catalog, is perfectly fine.
Reviews of this movie are not kind. Maybe those writers came in with higher expectations based on the cast, or a chip on their shoulder because of the studio association. I'm not here to tell you that Zombie Night is a hidden gem or anything worth your full attention for 85 minutes. But it moves quickly, looks fine, and kept me mildly entertained.
High Points
Nobody is swinging for an Oscar here, but by golly does it make a difference when a movie, no matter how little ambition it has, casts professionals who know their way around a set
Low Points
I welcome zombie movies finding new tics to their version of the undead, but Zombie Night's ending throws a random fact about the monsters that comes out of nowhere and feels not just dumb, but like something that we should have been told 85 minutes earlier in order to have a better understanding of the stakes. Maybe I'm holding the screenplay to an Asylum studio movie to a bit too high a standard?
Lessons Learned
If you can see it, you can sew it!
All men, aside from Anthony Michael Hall, are rats
Never put a talking toy inside a casket
Rent/Bury/Buy
If you were to go by the reviews on IMDB, Zombie Night is the Plan 9 From Outer Space of the aughts. Its 3.5/10 rating is .2 worse than Death Count, WHICH IS A VERY BAD MOVIE. Zombie Night is not worse than Death Count. It's a perfectly passable cable horror movie that gets its minimum wage job done. Nobody needs to watch it, but if you're desperately seeking the undead, it's a watchable option.
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