ZOM 100: BUCKET LIST OF THE DEAD (2023)

ZOM 100: BUCKET LIST OF THE DEAD (2023)

Tagline: Nope.

(Action, Fantasy, Football Flashbacks) [R]

Note: This movie was released on streaming services under a TV-MA rating. That is generally considered the equivalent of a [R]. 

Try and do your worst! 

In this one, Akira pretty much hates his job and they pretty much hate him. He loves his co-worker but won’t say anything about it and his living situation is pretty crappy. Then suddenly a zombie outbreak happens and nearly everyone he knows is wiped out. Including this chick that he loved at his office, but she sucked anyway. Sometimes it takes a zombie outbreak to expose people’s true nature. With the end of the world at hand Akira decides to make a bucket list of stuff to do now that there is nothing but zombies to stop him. Along the way he runs into his friend and another girl who is really great at kicking zombie’s teeth in. 

First off, typically when you think of zombies you think of horror, and there are some horror elements here, but it’s mostly a fantasy comedy with zombies kind of tossed in here and there. Kind of like when you get a breakfast burrito that is mostly eggs, but you still get a few pieces of bacon in there which kind of makes it an egg and bacon burrito, but you wouldn’t say it’s a bacon burrito. Well, now I am super hungry. What was I saying? Oh yeah, we have a review going on here.

This movie is based on an anime series, so there is a lot of quirky humor thrown in with playful music. There is an interesting scene in here where the main character Akira Tendo asks for his bosses’ opinion and gets told he doesn’t need to ask about every little thing. Then he picks his own logo on a project and gets berated for not getting input. So crazy. I am very fortunate I don’t work in an environment like that. 

We do get running zombies in this thing, and the most dangerous kind of zombie is the running zombie. If we ever have a real outbreak, I hope those suckers are super slow, the slow ones are just so much easier to deal with. Apparently, you can kill a Japanese zombie, it’s not necessary to shoot them in the head. I kind of liked this aspect because it always bugged me that a bullet to the head would kill something that should already be brain-dead. 

I thought I recognized Kazuki Kitamura who plays Akira’s boss in this, and I did. He was also in GODZILLA: FINAL WARS. I don’t know any of the other talents involved in this thing. Eiji Akaso who plays Akira is pretty solid and has done some of KAMEN RIDER stuff, but not the one I saw. 

There are some pretty crazy sequences in the second half of the film. Even for a comedy, Akira being able to hold a shark’s mouth open is pretty nuts. I don’t care about realism, but even I have to admit, if they were going to do that, they should have just made the super suit he gets, super-powered rather than shark bite proof. The football flashbacks are interesting. They really don’t give Kenichiro and Akira backgrounds, but it does serve to explain their actions under pressure. 

This film does just enough to make you care about the characters. Except for Kenichiro who really just comes across as a wuss and a perv even though he has a couple redeeming qualities. Some people didn’t like the last hour, but for me, that was far better than the first half of the film.

Overall this is a pretty interesting movie, but outside of the shark sequences, there is also a lot of forgettable stuff here as well. I give this thing a 4 out of 7.

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