 |
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
American Zombie
A Review by Geoff Bough
American Zombie is the brainchild of acclaimed documentary film maker
Grace Lee whose 2005 documentary The Grace Lee Project was well received.
The Grace Lee project chronicled Grace Lee’s quest to contact women
all across the country with the same name as her in an effort to bring
to light societal prejudices towards Asian American women.
Quite a departure from her previous works, American Zombie finds Lee teamed with John Solomon (an investigative reporter), who both play themselves in the film to document the lives of an undead community in Los Angeles. The two quickly find that a virus, brought on by a violent death, is turning members of the community into zombies.
The film candidly follows the sordid lives of 4 highly functioning “Revenants”: Ivan (Austin Basis), a convenience store clerk who creates a zine in his free time, Lisa (Jane Edith Wilson), a florist who designs funeral floral arrangements and subtly longs for the peace in eternal rest, Joel (Al Vicente), who is the founder of Z.A.G (Zombie Advocacy Group,) an activist bent on ensuring equality for the undead, and finally we have Judy, a timid Asian American zombie in search of the happiness of true love.
With the virus and notion of zombies being relatively new, each of the zombies represent their own sort of social struggle in a community that has not quite yet accepted them as equal. It’s widely known that utilizing the undead as a vessel to express or raise social awareness can be quite profound. This is certainly the case with American Zombie as those of us who are socially conscious can identify with them. It also draws many parallels to social/political scenarios and inequalities plaguing society today.
The documentary approach of the film has its pros and cons, which some people may weigh differently. I felt that through candidly following the zombies, the situations and character struggles had more of an impact because they weren’t glossed over. They were grittier real world scenarios. However, the pacing of the film was dreadfully slow at times. Grace is more concerned with documenting the struggles of the zombies with focused attention, while John is fanatical about discovering if they do in fact eat human flesh. The two often clash in comical arguments which later become overused.
The film then takes an unnecessary journey to the zombie social event Live Dead, a sort of Burning Man for the undead. Here we see the zombies interacting en masse as the human outsiders seem to be ostracized. Their mission to further document the zombie culture intensifies and John’s suspicions of the zombies is proven true.
I was caught off guard by the conclusion of the film because the entirety of it was building up the zombies as these fun-loving, misunderstood, vulnerable creatures that we were beginning to feel sympathetic towards. That had to be completely disregarded as we now learn that they are indeed the malicious, murderous dispositions that John pegged them as. Just as the film was really making you think about what issues the zombies were representing in our own society, I got this all-for-not feeling that left me as if I was being chastised for caring about the plight of the zombies.
American Zombie is a very ambitious and thought-provoking film but the ending really throws off the groundwork the film had built thus far. What could have been a brilliant socio-political satire was more of a tepid, comical expose of social downfalls. American Zombie was an obvious departure for Lee so I applaud her for exploring her film canvas and I will certainly pay attention to her future works. I do recommend American Zombie at least for it’s crafty use of documentary film making and zombies to encourage social awareness, something we’re looking forward to seeing from Diary of the Dead as well.
American Zombie
A Review by Jon Walmsley
Zombie movies, possibly the most versatile genre in horror. Ranging from
comedy, drama, satire, straight up horror, even Zombie Musicals, there
are always new and interesting interpretations of these tales. Currently
we are experiencing a period of Zombie Documentaries, which is the category
American Zombie probably falls into. However that would unfairly suggest
comparisons with "Zombie Diaries" or "Diary of the Dead",
both of which take a more Cinematic, rather than Journalistic approach
that American Zombie utilises.
It is very much a documentary in structure employing interviews rather
than standard character storytelling. The film focuses of 4 high-functioning
Revenants, each of whom are dealing with their undead status in different
ways. The 2 documentarians follow these zombies and interview them about
their daily lives, how they are treated and what their expectations of
life are. Of the 2 directors, Solomon more interested in the 'guts and
gore' angle, whereas Grace wants to present a snapshot of life as a zombie
without all the exploitation. Their filming takes them to a zombies only
festival 'Live Dead', where the film changes from a standard documentary
about the zombies into a horror film in which the filmmakers themselves
take centre-stage.
The film is an interesting one, yet again showing the versatility of the undead genre. In this case the zombies are representative of any minority group, although being undead we feel no guilt in assuming them as an underclass. This allows the viewer to arc from disgust through to acceptance, a feat which would be harder to achieve had a standard minority group scenario been under discussion.
Anyway, enough intellectualising. I loved the zombie hunting private-eye, who discusses (and demonstrates) in detail all his favourite methods of dispatching those pesky zombies, and the whole 2nd half of the movie set in the hippy festival was particularly creepy. However, I side with co-director John Solomon - where's all the gore and flesh eating? Pah! Honestly, it may have quality acting, genuine originality and believable character development but it's no C.H.U.D.