Welcome back to BlazinBlue’s Review. Yesterday, we had the pleasure of talking about Ghoulies and Ghoulies II in a fantastic double feature. Today, I’m here with a look at another film. While I have had a few entries in the It Came From The Dollar Tree, I believe that I’ve found a film that would fit right at home there. One that doubles down on its American-ness. One that isn’t afraid to be bold and completely over the top. One that doubles down on the use of fart jokes. If you’ve looked through your local Dollar Tree shelves, you may have found it. I’m here to talk about American Zombieland.
Now, American Zombieland is a film that most won’t like. It has a very unique approach to what it’s trying to do. It completely gives all it has with its clear guerilla style filmmaking approach. It never takes itself seriously one bit. Oh, did I mention that there is literally no budget to this film? And then there is the absolute icing on the cake. American Zombieland wasn’t the original title for the film. No, no. They were going to be absolutely in your face with what type of film it is with its original title. And that was Fat Ass Zombies. If I had to guess why they changed the name? They were probably trying to pull an Asylum and capitalize on the use of ‘Zombieland’. I mean it makes sense when you consider it had only been a few years since we had seen the release of Zombieland 2. Surely, people would forget right?
The cast for American Zombieland is a complete group of unknowns. Each one delivers an okay performance. For me, I’m someone that tries not to outright hate on movies. I can usually manage to find something interesting about each film that I watch. With this film, it has a few memorable members of its cast. If I had to label what kind of characters are featured in the film, I could have a lot of fun. Just imagine a movie that features a Tiger King wannabe, an aspiring filmmaker that can’t make a film to save their life, a teacher that pines after the filmmaker, two identical twins (who look nothing alike), and a clear theatrical performer. Those are basically the types you’d find.
The story for the film is extremely simple. A Hostess type company makes Freedom Cakes (Ding Dongs), which leads people to acquire a hunger that turns them into zombies. Then the filmmaker and his ragtag group of survivors take it upon themselves to film a movie in the ZombIe Apocalypse. They even go as far as to utilize ‘real zombies’ as zombies in the film. No zombies were harmed in the filming of this movie. Honestly, it did feel a bit like it was trying to harness similar energy as Shaun of the Dead. It definitely doesn’t stand up to that level that Shaun had managed to capture.
There are zombies in the movie. However, they look like actors with white makeup caked on them. Definitely illustrates just how low budget this film had to work with. There were one or two of the zombies that were memorable. Just probably not in the way that one would hope.
What does all of this lead to? Well, it leads to a film that is extremely over the top. It honestly felt like something of a fever dream. Many times I was left just wondering what was going on in the film. It wouldn’t have felt out of place as an Asylum movie, except with an incredibly lower budget. You know how sometimes you have a cold and take some medicine then decide to watch a movie? How there may be parts where the film just blows by in an instant and then you don’t know how it went from Part A to Part C? Well, that’s definitely the type of experience that you get with American Zombieland. And if that’s what you’re looking for, you won’t be disappointed. Is it something that I’ll come back to? No.
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