Zombies

There’s something neat about a zombie film made for Disney. Mainly, it’s neat to see how Disney crafted it to fall in line with their other films made for a younger audience without teetering on The Walking Dead. It has to be difficult to find the good within the bad and then magnify it to keep the familiar content grounded without completely negating the fact that zombies eat people. Thankfully, it’s a balance is crafted carefully and that works out in Disney’s favor with their made for television flick, Zombies.

Official Synopsis
Disney’s “ZOMBIES” is a music- and dance-filled story set in the fictitious world of Seabrook, a cookie-cutter community brimming with perky conformity 50 years after a zombie apocalypse. Today, the zombies pose no threat, but are required to live in Zombietown, an isolated, rundown community infused with their unique creative spirit. When zombies are finally allowed to enroll in Seabrook High School, the charming, charismatic zombie Zed, who is determined to play football, meets freshman Addison who dreams of being a cheerleader — the ultimate form of status in Seabrook. Addison takes a lot of flak for befriending Zed and his zombie friends, but comes to learn that zombies and cheerleaders aren’t so different after all. Zed and Addison work together to show Seabrook what they can achieve when they embrace their differences and celebrate what makes them a community.

This is what happens when you get A High School Musical featuring the undead. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly can’t reach the same scales of HSM. Not even close. There is some rough bridging between plot points and songs, even though the songs are good.

Anyway, Zombies starts out simple by establishing Zed, our main zombie, and Addison, our main human, and taking us through their family lives at the beginning and setting a solid tone to zombie/human situations. The film did an admirable job of setting the first act stance right from the get-go. As the story predictably flows towards an eventual meeting between the two, it sets up little pockets of troubled water through an anti-zombie cheerleader leader (say that five times), Bucky, and his cohorts of followers that want to make the get together between Zed and Addison impossible. The latter part of that sentence has ground to work on and then shaky ground soon after. The groundwork is that the prejudice from Bucky is defined through attitude and action, as well as non-verbal cues of disgust, though not completely warranted. Sure, you can assume that Bucky’s attitude stems from a society that shuns the zombie type, but his immense hatred for Zed and his kind needed more reasoning. Maybe a zombie killed his grandparent or turned one of his parents into a zombie. You don’t have to go too dark with Bucky’s reasoning, but you have to have more of a reason than he just is prejudice. His anger doesn’t match the rest of the school’s anger halfway through the film when Zed starts convincing other humans that zombies can be great people too, so Bucky’s anger needs more reasoning behind it. This was a missed opportunity in the film, though I’m sure director Paul Hoen didn’t want to dig too deep to uncover something sinister.

Bucky aside, the aforementioned shaky bridge between plot points is patched up by singing, but not completely healed by it. You go from Zed having issues with keeping his cool because his zombie band (he has to wear this to stay normal because without it he desires brains) is malfunctioning, and then it switches to Zed inviting Addison to a Zombie-Mash party, which comes out of nowhere. There are a lot of good moments in the film that accompanied by fantastic dancing and song, but usually they contain bad connections, which makes for a questionable movie as a whole. I do realize this film is made for kids, so they won’t care, but it does have some obvious flaws that could have easily been rectified.

Of course, as the story continues, as you can imagine, the zombie band goes haywire, some zombies turn against humans (no blood, though, just scary moments), including Zed, and then the great zombie/human ‘holding hands in harmony’ moment is setback. Bucky gets what he wants, zombies get removed from school and things go back to ‘normal’, except that Addison and Zed still want to be together.

As the film concludes, somehow the story gets set straight, though I won’t tell you how. Overall, there are some great moments in the movie, but they usually don’t transition from one to the other well.

That said, I don’t think that Zombies is a bad film, as it touches upon a few important things these days that need to be magnified.

First and foremost, Zombies proves that not all zombie films have to be violent thrill-rides and The Walking Dead-type. With a little Disney pizazz, zombies are approached in an innocent, almost empathetic way, though there is mention of brains and hunting down humans to keep the zombie theme just a bit familiar with what’s out there. I can dig that approach and it will certainly make younger kids more keen on the idea of zombies and less afraid of them.

Secondly, the film does a great job of bringing in the notion that we may not all be the same, but our differences make us strong, especially when we include and accept each other ‘as is’. I liked the message of unity in the film. It’s a positive message that needs to be drilled into the noggin of kids these days. For example, Zed knows what and who he is, a zombie — a being that he sees in a positive light, he also realizes the prejudices against him, but still wants to unify zombies and humans. His character arc is beautiful and well defined, and he carries that message with him from beginning to end. His counterpart, Addison, does the same thing. She realizes that not all humans are the same, including herself, and that the same respect she has for that notion translates over to zombies. Her desire to get to know zombies and be friends with them is admirable, and it carries the same unified message as Zed. I love this message.

Lastly, the movie carries a Romeo & Juliet air about it, where love has no boundaries. Zed and Addison’s desire to be with each other, as girlfriend and boyfriend, overcomes perceived flaws and preconceived notions that others have about them, zombie or human-kind alike. The movie does a good job of showing that nothing can stop love from happening and that instead of fighting the idea, people should embrace it. That is incredibly important and echoes some of the same messages that William Shakespeare set in motion hundreds of years ago.

All in all, Zombies is a very flawed film structurally, but the messages it delivers is vital for young people today to know and live by. It’s definitely not going to win an Academy Award or Emmy, but it’s going to entertain the younger kids in the household in a safe, Disney-esque manner.

On the special features side of the tracks, here’s what you’re getting with this DVD:

– Bloopers
– Deleted Scenes
– Audition Footage
– Zombies Survival Guide to High School
– And a few other goodies

For a release like this, it’s impressive to see these many features. Enjoy them, as they’re good added value.