ZOMBIE TOWN (2023)

ZOMBIE TOWN (2023)

Tagline: A Cursed Film. A Town full of Zombies. Two teens are the only Hope.

(Comedy, Horror, Worst Revenge Reason Ever) [PG-13]

Note: This movie is also known as RL STEIN’S ZOMBIE TOWN. 

I’ll never watch another zombie movie again…

In this one, director Len Carver practically runs the small town of Carverville by proxy. He is so popular the whole town kind of revolves around his horror films. The problem is that Carver hasn’t released a movie in 30 years and is finally launching a new one in the local theater on Halloween night. Mike works at the theaters and is kind of bummed that his best friend Amy is going to a big party without him. When Carver shows up to the theater with his newest film, Mike can’t help by call Amy and share the news with her. She talks him into showing it on the night before it’s premiere. What they don’t know, is that the film is cursed. Can they escape ZOMBIE TOWN? 

First off, I did watch the trailer for this movie and fully expected it to be a lot more fun than it actually was. I honestly think that the GOOSEBUMP movies that were inspired by RL Stein’s books are vastly superior to this film which is kind of a downer because there are two comedic legends in this film with Dan Aykroyd (GHOSTBUSTERS) who plays Len Carver and Chevy Chase (NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION) who plays Mezmerian. 

Acting-wise, Aykroyd has some decent lines in this but isn’t as funny as I was hoping. In fact, the movie overall is just kind of bland. Chase is fine but only gets about 2 minutes of screen time in the whole movie. Madi Monroe plays Amy in this and I am guessing that they were hoping she would draw more Gen-Z because she has a very large social media empire apparently, but I don’t know if that is going to pan out with this thing. In the role she is fine, but there is a scene in here that feels very awkward on screen towards the end of the film. It just didn’t seem like she and Marlon Kazadi who plays Mike, had any chemistry at all. Marlon is pretty solid in this and gets asked to show more range than Madi, but the dialog could have been a lot better. The writers failed to come up with a plausible reason for the way Mike is the way he is on this one. Marlon is best known for the TV series “Riverdale”. My favorite characters in this movie weren’t part of the main cast. First off Brenna Coates does a great job of playing a cold lifeless librarian named Ms. Bonnard. She gets a fair amount of screen time which is cool. I haven’t seen any of her other films but she is the daughter of Kim Coates from RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE. This is also a fun outing for Henry Czerny (MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING) who plays Richard Landro. I am used to seeing him in way more serious roles, so it was pretty cool that he showed up in a more lighthearted role here. 

The soundtrack was pretty cool and I enjoyed that, but the score was iffy. I think I walked into this either expecting more traditional zombies than what we get here and a lot more humor. Unfortunately, this is largely a miss, and as I stated earlier, with the bar set by the two GOOSEBUMP films, this movie just drives off a comedic and horror film cliff with a really weak plot. I hate saying that as well because this cast deserved better. Heck, even RL. Stein is in this movie and deserves better. There is also a pacing issue where the opening is mediocre and then we spend around 45 minutes of the movie waiting for something to happen. 

Overall ZOMBIE TOWN gets a 3 out of 7. It’s not barely watchable, but calling it solid would be doing a disservice to fans of RL Stein and horror in general. 

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