Halloween Horrorfest 2018: ZOMBIE HUNTER (2013)

Poster design courtesy of Robert Rodriguez;
slogan courtesy of Peter Jackson...

I will watch pretty much anything with Danny Trejo in it.  Even a lame neo-grindhouse flick where he appears for maybe twenty minutes in spite of being top-billed and is directed by a guy who really loves the pink filter he bought for his camera.

For the record, Trejo plays ‘Father Jesus,’ an axe-weilding priest who makes one speech, provides some exposition, fights some zombies in one pink-filtered scene while bare-chested, and ultimately gets decapitated by a CGI monster that looks like it’s on loan from the Resident Evil franchise.  He’s there for a paycheck, but at least he puts in the work needed to earn said paycheck. 

I cannot say the same for the rest of the people involved.

I’ve said on Dread Media that you can be a good film, or you can be a bad film, but the one thing you can’t be is a boring film.  And nothing is more boring in a film than a succession of ideas cribbed from other places that are just presented as is, unembellished and untinkered with.  And that’s this film in spades.  It’s obvious that co-writer/director Kevin King has watched a lot of movies and feels all he has to do is throw things from those films up on the screen and call it his.  And I get the impression the films he watched to cook up this goulash of half-baked set-pieces and bad line readings weren’t true grindhouse films, but those films inspired by grindhouse films--so it’s like watching a copy of a copy of a copy.  There’s no here here--just character ‘types’ spouting dialogue cribbed from other movies and going through the motions in a scenario I’ve seen being done by better directors many times over.  Even the credits are derivative of the Marvel Studios house style.

And you know, I’d be a little more forgiving if King had gone over the top with the violence and the sex.  Don’t get me wrong, it still would've sucked, but I wouldn’t have been as nasty about it.  But for a film with a stripper called Fast Lane Debbie in it (Okay, it’s never said she’s a stripper, but she’s named Fast Lane Debbie and does a pole dance at one point, so....), it’s positively chaste, with no nudity or sensuality in it and the violence is almost all CGI, so it doesn’t even look real or gross.  I mean, when you’ve seen one CGI blood spatter, you’ve pretty much seen them all.

I know there are some people who will say I took this film too seriously, that I should have known it was stupid going in, and I should have just turned off my brain and enjoyed it.  Well first, I like my brain turned on.  Second, I have no problem with stupid--you’re talking to one of the greatest fans of Phillipe Mora here, after all--but I do have a problem with lazy.  This film is lazy to the point of showing contempt for its audience.  And that, my friends, is something I cannot abide.

Do I need to say this is not recommended?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll have to find  a good movie to wash the taste of this one out of my mouth.

How YOU Can Curate The 2nd Half Of The Horrorfest!

There's still a few days for you to help curate this year's Halloween Horrorfest

If you donate $31 to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network before October 15th and send me the receipt proving you did, you can name one movie I have to watch during the Horrorthon.  Keep in mind there are some things I won’t do (so no Eli Fucking Roth movies, for example), and it has to be a movie I can find.  If you’re an independent filmmaker and are willing to make the donation, by all means send me the film.  I will do as many as I can before October 31st, and those I can I will view in the days after Halloween during ‘Beyond Halloween Horrorfest.'