Zombie Dearest starts as failed comedy script writer Gus Lawton (writer & director David Kemker) & his wife Deborah (Shauna Black) are having marriage difficulties, they decide to live in a renovate Deborah's old childhood farmhouse left to her by her parents in an attempt to patch things up with a new start. Unfortunately Gus is lazy & wishes he had some help to dig up the septic tank out back & if by magic a zombie called Quinto (David Sparrow) pops up out of the ground, at first Gus is surprised & taken aback by this strange event but soon likes the idea after he realises Quinto will do anything he says including digging his septic tank up. However Deborah isn't that keen on having a rotten zombie around the farm & the tension begins to grow, will Quinto the zombie come between Gus & Deborah? Can they make it work? Why does Quinto attack people & how do they get rid of him?
Written, directed & starring David Kemker who also gets a music credit too this zom rom com (zombie romantic comedy) has a decent enough idea behind it, it feels different & it's nice to watch a (light hearted) horror film with proper adult character's in the leads rather than irritating teens but a pedestrian pace, a lack of any real horror & an unfocused script that can't decide what it wants to be prevents it from being any good. Zombie Dearest could have been a effective & amusing little slice of horror themed satire about modern relationships but it takes half an hour before Quinto turns up, there's never any explanation as to what a dead body is doing buried in the yard anyway despite a seemingly random flashback showing two people burying it, far to much time is spent on the dull love triangle between Gus, his wife Deborah & her boss Donald & all the sub par soap opera melodramatics that go with it & the comedy side of things isn't much better with subtle one-liners & wringing comedy from the actual situation. Gus isn't funny & neither are his caveman jokes, I don't know about anyone else but watching someone who isn't funny telling unfunny jokes just isn't that much fun as far as I am concerned. The other major scripting issue here is the twist ending which is surely one of the worst ever & in ten seconds manages to undo & render the previous 85 minutes totally pointless, it's almost as if the makers didn't know how to finish their story off & thought lets just go right back to the beginning before it all happened so we don't have to come up with an ending. At the time of writing this comment there are no other's on the IMDb or any 'External Reviews' either so I am not sure how widely released Zombie Dearest is but let me tell you your not missing much.
Another thing that really holds Zombie Dearest back is an almost total lack of horror, Quinto the zombie just sort of stands there digging a hole for the first hour or so & then just wanders around a bit at the end which to be fair does pick up a bit but not much. There's not much gore here, there's a bloodless neck bite & one brief scene of intestine eating at the end otherwise absolutely nothing & even the zombie make-up on Quinto is quite tame considering he's supposed to have been buried for years. There's supposed to be one sex scene with them using headlamps but no-one takes their clothes off & thus there is no nudity so it doesn't count as far as I am concerned.
Apparently filmed in Ontario in Canada this actually looks quite nice with decent photography & real locations. The acting is alright to be fair especially the two leads & Shauna Black is quite cute actually.
Zombie Dearest is part zombie horror film & part romantic comedy with an attempt at satire thrown in there too, to say it doesn't work is an understatement as, well, it doesn't. Not my sort of thing but if you can stay awake during it there's the basis of a good idea although it's all taken away by a terrible twist ending that robs the viewer of any satisfaction or closure.
Written, directed & starring David Kemker who also gets a music credit too this zom rom com (zombie romantic comedy) has a decent enough idea behind it, it feels different & it's nice to watch a (light hearted) horror film with proper adult character's in the leads rather than irritating teens but a pedestrian pace, a lack of any real horror & an unfocused script that can't decide what it wants to be prevents it from being any good. Zombie Dearest could have been a effective & amusing little slice of horror themed satire about modern relationships but it takes half an hour before Quinto turns up, there's never any explanation as to what a dead body is doing buried in the yard anyway despite a seemingly random flashback showing two people burying it, far to much time is spent on the dull love triangle between Gus, his wife Deborah & her boss Donald & all the sub par soap opera melodramatics that go with it & the comedy side of things isn't much better with subtle one-liners & wringing comedy from the actual situation. Gus isn't funny & neither are his caveman jokes, I don't know about anyone else but watching someone who isn't funny telling unfunny jokes just isn't that much fun as far as I am concerned. The other major scripting issue here is the twist ending which is surely one of the worst ever & in ten seconds manages to undo & render the previous 85 minutes totally pointless, it's almost as if the makers didn't know how to finish their story off & thought lets just go right back to the beginning before it all happened so we don't have to come up with an ending. At the time of writing this comment there are no other's on the IMDb or any 'External Reviews' either so I am not sure how widely released Zombie Dearest is but let me tell you your not missing much.
Another thing that really holds Zombie Dearest back is an almost total lack of horror, Quinto the zombie just sort of stands there digging a hole for the first hour or so & then just wanders around a bit at the end which to be fair does pick up a bit but not much. There's not much gore here, there's a bloodless neck bite & one brief scene of intestine eating at the end otherwise absolutely nothing & even the zombie make-up on Quinto is quite tame considering he's supposed to have been buried for years. There's supposed to be one sex scene with them using headlamps but no-one takes their clothes off & thus there is no nudity so it doesn't count as far as I am concerned.
Apparently filmed in Ontario in Canada this actually looks quite nice with decent photography & real locations. The acting is alright to be fair especially the two leads & Shauna Black is quite cute actually.
Zombie Dearest is part zombie horror film & part romantic comedy with an attempt at satire thrown in there too, to say it doesn't work is an understatement as, well, it doesn't. Not my sort of thing but if you can stay awake during it there's the basis of a good idea although it's all taken away by a terrible twist ending that robs the viewer of any satisfaction or closure.
