Director: Drazen Zerkovic
Year: 2025
Country: Croatia/Montenegro/Bosnia and Herzegovina
Alternate Titles: Šalša
Genre: Zombie; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Trying to find some extra money, a hapless loser is forced to take a summer job working with his grandmother on her remote tomato farm, harvesting the fruit she grows, only to find his efforts thwarted when a government experiment brings a zombie horde to life and attacks them.
Review:
This was a really fun and generally likable genre effort. Among the better elements within this one is the impressive setup that provides the film with a clear-cut structure involving the two distinct halves of the story. The first part of the film is set up to be a fantastic fish-out-of-water comedy involving his arrival at the tomato farm through a strange series of events that require him to get some fast money and find a job at the grandmother’s house, harvesting tomatoes with her. That is such a silly look at what’s happening around him. The lifestyle and climate of the remote community, compared to what he's used to, make for a great series of gags and situational comedy where he’s so unsure of how to work in that kind of environment, as his flustered nature and misunderstandings create a solid series of comedic gags. It’s possible some might find this section drags on a bit too long, as there’s no action or even hint of zombie activity until nearly an hour in, so it’s entirely possible to not be aware at all that this is a genre presentation until then, even though this is genuinely fun and highly likable.
When the outbreak occurs and it becomes obvious that a zombie outbreak has occurred in the area, this starts getting a bit more interesting for genre fans. The opening encounter in the tomato field is a nice short gag that works due to the suddenness of the situation and lack of anything until then, but the main segue here is immensely fun and zany, with the festival being interrupted by the arriving swarm, throwing the whole thing into chaos. The series of encounters and confrontations that take place around the island offer up the kind of fantastic high-energy scenarios where the sheer panic and chaos of trying to deal with the zombies make everything quite fun, allowing for some great zombie action and even some solid gore to cap everything off. There could’ve been a more logical and thought-through process here for the cause of the outbreak, which has a decent idea behind it, but doesn’t have that kind of realistic logic that it should've, being what holds this one down.
Overview: ****/5
An immensely fun and zany zombie and comedy film, this one manages to generate quite a solid series of positive points against a few minor problems that end up causing this to be a massive blast. Give this a shot if you’re a massive fan of the approach taken here, appreciate zombie films or horror/comedies, or are curious about it, while others turned off by those factors should heed caution.
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