Director: Christian James
Year: 2013
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Entering a woman’s bathroom facility, a janitor in a high-rise building enters a woman’s bathroom for regular janitorial services only to get trapped inside when a zombie outbreak occurs and traps him inside, forcing him and another trapped co-worker to try to escape the situation.
Review:
This was a decent enough zombie comedy. Among its best aspects here is the rather strong and enjoyable setup that immediately drops us into the main scenario. It’s incredibly quick into this one that he becomes trapped inside the stall witnessing the attempted lesbians turn on each other when the zombie attacks the other one and keeps him inside. This results in the film exploring the possibility of its premise where he tries to find ways of getting out of the room where they get interrupted by the new zombies getting into the bathroom. The continuous influences to keep them out results in plenty of enjoyable and fun action here, from trying to sound an alarm to alert authorities to grabbing weapons from inside the room to use against them and finally the full-on action of the escape attempts to get out of the bathroom which are all due to the film’s desire to keep the zombies as threats throughout which is greatly appreciated.
That also leads to the film’s comedic atmosphere and attitude. The fact that so much of this one is carried along through the hapless lead, focusing on the down-on-his-luck career guy with no prospects or positive outlook on life who keeps getting himself into deeper trouble creates plenty of laughs as his lack of smoothness or grace generates tons of fun. Mixing together his lacking heroic qualities with genuine physical comedy, such as using severed fingers and a bra as a slingshot, continually using his reflection in a mirror on the other side of the room as a distraction to complete tasks, or coming up with toilet paper as body armor to protect himself while wading through hordes of creatures offers up that fine combination of inverting his expected heroism with fine physical comedy as these come about due to needing to protect himself from previous screw-ups. On the whole, these are what really work here.
This one does have some minor flaws here. The main flaw here is the absolutely flimsy and barely worthwhile storyline in keeping the film going as long as it does. There’s very little at work here requiring this to be stretched out with the two figures in a single location as a feature-length film, requiring him to be completely inept at everything to further the story. None of that is realistic or believable, causing the film to get to a respectable running time by utilizing its secondary flaw in mind-numbing conversations between them. Zooming into a sketch on the wall for her face instead of switching to being in her stall serves to highlight the twist from the very start, and as none of it's hounding or him or dirty stories really all that funny making it appear as padding to stretch it’s premise out. These are pretty much the only areas holding this down.
Overview: ***/5
A generally fun and enjoyable genre effort that keeps the laughs going rather nicely even with some issues with that part of the film, on the whole, this one has a lot to like even with a few minor issues to distract it. Give this a look if you’re intrigued by the premise or appreciate this quirky style of British genre/comedy effort, while those who don’t really appreciate them should heed caution.
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