When the dead are back, what do we do with them? RKSS (Turbo Kid, Summer of ’84) offers a fresh take on the undead in the SCREAMBOX Original We Are Zombies, streaming everywhere August 13.

In the world of We Are Zombies, the dead have returned to plague us all… by being in our way and taking up space.

Not the flesh-and-brain eaters we have come to know from countless fictional portrayals of the past several decades, the undead of We Are Zombies are more of an inconvenient nuisance. As they have returned, arguments have popped up over what rights they may or may not be entitled to, and society has wrestled with what to do with them. In has stepped the Coleman Corporation to help humanity out with these struggles.

Our protagonists–hapless buddies Karl and Freddy, and Karl’s sister Maggie–are just trying to make a buck. They imitate employees of Coleman’s and sell the zombies they catch to the highest bidders on the black market. Eventually, their ruse is caught onto, and Karl and Maggie’s grandmother is kidnapped and held for the ransom of the money they have taken from the corporation.

In an effort to get the needed money, the three get brought before an eccentric artist about to debut his new zombie-based show, and he wants one of the most beautiful and well-known undead as his date. So Karl, Freddy, and Maggie get sent out to find her so they can afford to get grandma back.

But behind the scenes, more is going on than our heroes could ever imagine.

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The conceit of We Are Zombies is an interesting one. Zombies have long since run out of gas as an interesting horror concept, and they have been replaced by demons as the horror villains du jour for the last decade or so. Even in the realm of the comedy or the horror parody, it’s been ages since we have had a great take down of the zombie sub-genre. So for We Are Zombies to come along with a relatively fresh take on the undead menaces is pretty creative.

The film’s idea that the living dead return and are little more than just an impolite nuisance is a fun one, and I wish we would have seen that more extrapolated upon. We do get to see stuff like how the zombies are treated along political party lines and what kinds of groups and organizations spring up around them, so that is all neat! It’s still a solidly fun idea, and I have to give credit for the ingenuity behind thinking of it!

+ The story is pretty inspired in this one, with the tale taking a fair few turns as it winds its way to the conclusion. There are a lot of characters involved in this one, and it genuinely feels like the whole world is closing in on Karl, Freddy, and Maggie. They are feeling pressure from every side.

You’ve got a kidnapped grandma, a power struggle in the stereotypical Big Evil Corporation, the artist wunderkind trying to find the perfect date to his big show… it’s all enough to drive our protagonists nuts. And everything is written so well that as a viewer, I never felt lost or like I forgot that a subplot was going on. So I was a fan of the screenplay of this effort and how it kept so many balls in the air around our central heroes.

– It almost feels like the movie can’t help itself. After the creative conceit and the fun world-building of what society would be like if zombies returned but were simply an overrunning, problematic bunch of bodies, the third act sees the creatures reduced to infectious flesh-eaters after all. There are a fun idea and a decent story going on, but in the end, we returned to the old idea that zombies eat folks and are a threat to the world. The last scene of We Are Zombies shows a city plagued by the undead and welcomes us to the real zombie apocalypse.

Until the third act, We Are Zombies has some clever twists and turns, and it all seems to be going in a singular direction. And after not having spent large amounts of the runtime showcasing as much of the “Zombies In The World” concept as I would have liked, this turn back to the old reliable standard felt like runtime-padding.

– I will say that for a comedy, not a lot of the humor of this one always landed for me. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have funny moments–it definitely does!–but it felt like it was throwing a lot of jokes at the wall and seeing what sticks.

We have two different Big Oaf With A Heart Of Gold characters, and that absolutely felt like one too many. There are a lot of masturbation and semen related humor. Which can work, but here it felt a touch trite. Humor is always a Your Mileage May Vary kind of thing, and I appreciate that, but the efforts here didn’t feel like they landed for me.

Additionally, our leads aren’t wildly likable. Which makes it hard to laugh at some of their antics. If they had come across as a bit more sympathetic or even pleasant, it’s possible that the jokes may have had more impact, but unfortunately as it is, they don’t.

OVERALL

We Are Zombies takes a fresh idea and a solid enough screenplay and does what it can with it. At 80 minutes, it’s absolutely worth a watch because of the enjoyable writing behind everything. Unfortunately, the humor in practice just isn’t up to the level of the plot concept in theory, and the ending did not work for me because the film seemed to run out of gas… and ideas.