THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A top-secret government experiment to turn soldiers into warriors who "can be all they can be" has failed and the serum used for their creation needs to be dumped pronto. Unfortunately, while on route, the truck transporting this dubious cargo crashes and the barrels roll free. One such barrel of the lucid green liquid finds its way to the back of a bowling alley - contaminating a nearby beer keg. While attempting to make beer flavoured ice-cream, four teenagers unwittingly turn the green goo into sundaes, slurring up the feverish creation with relish and becoming Zombies as a result of their shenanigans. However, they don't know they are Zombies - to them, its everyone else who is acting strange.

MY VERDICT:

Wasting Away (also known as Aaah! Zombies!!) is a hard movie to sum up, hence the long description above. Essentially, what it boils down to is a comedic Zombie movie akin to The Return of the Living Dead but where the story follows a group of Zombies who don't originally know they are Zombies, but eventually find out; learning, through experience, that it is not the major bummer that it you might think. Its definitely a fun tale and the twin perspectives of 'what the living see' and 'what the living dead see' are handled really well; the real-world shown in black and white, the Zombie view of the world shown in colour so as not to get confusing. The movie also scores highly for being so unique; apart from Warm Bodies, I cannot recall any movie told from the Zombie's point of view or one where you are actually rooting for the Zombies (I always champion the Zombies in any movie but that's a different matter). There's just something about it that keeps it from true Zombie comedy gold levels. The story does borrow significantly from The Return of the Living Dead including its barrels of Trioxin - replaced by the barrels of green goo in Wasting Away. It also runs at quite a slow pace as though unsure of what direction to take that story and the mediocre acting does let the film down a tad more so, for me, it just didn't really stick; a 'good but not great' movie.