Aaah! Zombies!!

Year of Release: 2007
Genre: Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 5.6 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

I love zombie movies: there’s something about the world coming to an end at the hands (and teeth) of hordes of the undead that I just find highly appealing. Prior to this movie, however, I’d never given much thought to the zombies themselves and how they might feel about their role in bringing society to its knees. Afterall, zombies seem like quite simple creatures in that they have relatively simple needs: a few brains every now and then to snack on and they’re perfectly happy. Or so we’ve been led to believe. Aaah! Zombies!! (a.k.a. Wasting Away) seeks to show the zombie apocalypse from the zombies’ perspective, revealing a far more complex and touching side to the undead that I’d ever expected from a walking corpse.

Nothing a good night's sleep won't fix...

It was just another night for Mike, Vanessa, Tim and Cindy, hanging out at the local bowling alley where Tim and Cindy work. Normal of course, except for the barrel of highly toxic experimental waste that accidentally rolled through town and landed up outside next to the beer kegs and ice cream mixture. With the war in Iraq dragging on a little the army has been attempting to bio-engineer the next generation of soldiers that can be sent it to kick ass and get back out in time for lunch. Unfortunately, rather than being turned into mega-soldiers, it turned the test subjects into zombies with a taste for the human brain. When the military truck taking the barrels of waste to a dumping site crashes it sends the barrels flying through the town, which is how it comes to contaminate our little group’s softserve machine. When the kids mix the contaminated ice cream with beer the stage is set for a very entertaining evening as they join the ranks of the undead.

Don't f*ck with me! I'll eat a bitch!

This is where all our assumptions regarding zombies are put to the test: after eating the contaminated ice cream the guys and girls wake up not realising that anything’s happened to them. Something that I never gave thought to until now was how zombies perceived themselves and their fellow undead friends: it turns out that they don’t see themselves any differently. To one another they look just as they did when they were alive and the horrid, brain-eating, rotting corpse version is only seen by the living. What seems to confuse them the most is that, given that a zombie’s brain isn’t firing on all cylinders, the living tend to speed up and speak a lot faster than usual. Given that the kids aren’t aware of any of this, they are understandably confused as to why they can be shot repeatedly and keep on going.

Zombie lovin' REALLY isn't pretty!

Of course the only person they manage to find that they can speak to is an equally confused soldier with part of a motorbike jammed in his abdomen. While he agrees that he and the kids have come into contact with something the military was working on, the conclusion he reaches is completely wrong. He thinks that they’ve been transformed into ‘super soldiers’ and that the rest of the town is infected with something far more deadly. Since he’s a soldier, people are shooting at them and Mike’s snacking on people’s brains as he goes along, the kids buy into what he tells them. Now they need to try and survive by ducking around the military personnel, killing cooking staff and keeping people so drunk that they can’t tell the difference between a living person and a walking corpse with neon green veins in hopes of making it to a better place where zombies can live without fear of persecution from the living.

It’s a story of love, bravery, struggle, discovering yourself, overcoming adversity, achieving independence and the many different ways of preparing a brain for dinner and there’s a little bit of something for everyone in this movie. Go and watch Aaah! Zombies!! for a very fun and enjoyable look at the other side of the zombie apocalypse 🙂

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Kittens explode in the hands of the undead.
• Plain brains are fine, but brains in a taco are the best.
• Avoid dairy at all costs – booze is what will save you in the end.
• Zombie sex is complicated by the fact that the necessary parts keep falling off.
• Zombies are remarkably good truck drivers.
• Zombies are amazing motivational speakers.
• In the military “blurrrgh-arrrrr-raaaaah” is a good enough description of a truck’s cargo to get it through a check point.

AAAH! ZOMBIES!! TRAILER