Wow, after viewing "The Book of Zombie" I am speechless, we get a lot of low budget zombie films in the mail here at The Liberal Dead, and a large chunk of them are of the comedy hybrid variety thanks to the success of "Shaun of The Dead" and other films such as "Zombieland", sadly most of these attempts turn out being unimaginative and half-a**ed. "The Book of Zombie" is absolutely incredible, it's fun, original, and something that I rarely get to say these days but it is also a very unique and fresh take on the zombie sub genre.
The story is beyond original, this is by far the most fresh take on the zombie film I have seen in ages, it's been a very long time since I had so much fun with an indie zombie flick. For those who have been screaming for something different from the genre, look no further "The Book of Zombie" will leave you satisfied and dying for more Mormon zombie madness. The dialog is all well written and a lot of the time very humorous, I laughed out loud many times during this movie, you can really tell that a lot of effort was put into the script and it shows in the end giving the film a very witty feel when it comes to interaction between the survivors.
The survivors are all interesting in their own ways, and the acting in "The Book of Zombies" while not Oscar worthy comes off very real and it really makes you care about each of the survivors, you honestly spend the entire film hoping that no one gets left behind because each and every one of them become important to the whole package, this is a feat a lot of directors and writers strive for but fall short of.
My personal favorite survivor had to of been Darwin Nedry (Andrew Loviska), I found him to be very easy for me to relate too on a individual level as I was pretty much that kid when I was his age as far as him being a nerdy stoner and armed with smart ass one liners for any occasion.
The relationship between him and his best friend Charlie Cooper (Paul Cantu), sets a very realistic tone when it comes to these two characters, once again the writing in this film really does an amazing job at making the characters feel like real people, making your audience form attachments to characters is something more horror films should work towards, it really makes it that much more effective when you kill someone off if you will authentically miss them in the movie.
Gore, gore, and more gore, "The Book of Zombie" is a blood bath when it comes to good old fashion gore. The special effects while your basic 80's splatter grade, get the job done just perfect. Loads of latex and buckets of blood with very little CGI usage, the only time I noticed outright that something was CGI was a flame effect but overall it took nothing from the experience.
So many scenes pop out when I think back to the gore, I forced myself to keep from using screen shots of the best of the best because I want you all to be as surprised as I was when the blood really started to hit the fan, but trust me gore hounds you will not be let down with "The Book of Zombie".
I laughed, I screamed "hell yeah" thanks to remarkable gore, and I even felt myself feeling bummed out during certain scenes, overall I loved this film and on behalf of The Liberal Dead give "The Book of Zombie" a very well earned and deserved 9 out of 10, don't pass up a chance to view this film as its one of the best indie zombie films to come along in a very long time.
9/10
