Director: Chris Cooney
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie
Plot:
Trying to get by in life, a high school student and his friends find themselves in the middle of a zombie outbreak caused by a virus transmitted by a shipment of tainted meat, and must lead his friends to safety, where a scientist working on a cure can help them overcome the zombies.
Review:
This was intriguing enough if ultimately an underwhelming genre effort. Among the brighter elements here is the use of solid and highly enjoyable zombie action that manages to be incredibly fun and worthwhile. The idea about where it comes from and how the infected are initially turned comes off incredibly well with the idea of tainted meat and dairy products turning the town rabid, creating a fun contrast with his vegan lifestyle to explain why he didn’t get turned during the initial outbreak. This is then turned into a series of brief but still likable encounters with the creatures turning around to attack the group, from his friend turning during a stopover for supplies, a gas-station confrontation that brings everyone together, and a solid final hour where the zombies are brought about to undergo the type of fun encounters where everything gets quite exciting and thrilling as there’s plenty of blood and gore in here. Overall, this all has enough here to be quite a lot to like here as a straightforward zombie tale.
There are some issues here that bring this down. One of the biggest drawbacks on display is the egregiously overlong and unnecessary running time that makes this one feel far longer than it really is. The biggest problem here is the first half, which takes quite a while to get going, focusing on a series of inane conversations around veganism as the best lifestyle to live, or spending time with an unlikable jerk of a friend who thinks he’s God’s gift to everyone around him. The friend sequences are painful to sit through as an alpha-male type who constantly pokes fun at the others in the group, puts down the veganism lifestyle any chance he gets, and comes off as a freeloading mooch more interested in making others pay for him takes all the fun out of the scenes of him hanging out with his friends being around someone difficult to imagine they would be friends with him. Thankfully, he does somewhat redeem himself later on, but the character at the beginning is a problem that needs to be dealt with.
Overruling all of that, though, is the egregiously preachy and nearly impossible to stomach veganism benefits that run rampant through the film. The whole idea in theory is a great contrast to the realization that the lifestyle choices would’ve made him immune to the virus running rampant in the community, coming from local meat and dairy products, but it never does anything interesting with it. Instead, we get endless conversations about the qualities of veganism in a tone more akin to preaching and lecturing, discussing health benefits or morality contradictions about being a vegan, which just grind the film to a halt to offer up these lectures and talking points. That’s to say nothing about how inopportune most of the conversations actually are, with the worst one being right after killing off their friends who have just turned into the creatures and decide to use that as a way of getting to know the truth about his vegan history. It’s all immensely frustrating and inappropriate, making for enough to hold this back.
Overview: ***.5/5
A solid and enjoyable enough zombie effort, there’s a lot to like here where it matters, even if some of the bigger issues featured here are enough to bring this down compared to what it could’ve been. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre fare or who are curious about it will have the most to like here, while most others out there will want to heed caution.
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