Wedding jitters Zombies have always been less fortunate than their supernatural vampire counterparts. About zombies did not shoot Oscar-winning films and did not write a lot of books sold out in huge circulations, zombies will never play Tom Cruise, and a young actor who devours the fake brains of the same actors, probably will not become a world sex symbol after this role. The problem with the walking dead is that their degree of “deadness” is much higher than that of bloodsuckers – they do not know how to speak, think and feel, which immediately throws them out of a variety of genres, from melodrama to drama, in which vampires, which are more than just a piece of meat, so successfully manifest themselves. The work of director-debutant Casey Walker wins for dead lovers of other people's brains a little bit of life, deciding to tell us about a guy who became "a little zombie." This idea was jokingly proposed to the author during a friendly gathering, when one of his friends said that it would be fun to make a film about a man who is bitten by a mosquito, after which the venom slowly enters his body and he finds signs of zombies. Humor humor, but Casey Walker really stuck on this idea, every day discovering more and more potential in it, and in the end he turned this simple plot into a very intricate zombie comedy, which of course will not be on the same level with all the famous work of Edgar Wright in this genre, but can please with a fresh look at horror humor.
First of all, Walker’s approach is interesting because he does not intend to build his picture on parodying serious representatives of the zombie genre. In fact, he does not even try to base his film on teasing - the director finds himself in juxtaposing familiar life situations with the unusual new state of the protagonist. In "A Little Zombie," we see four young people who are leaving to have a good time in a country house, a seemingly obvious parody of the classic slasher formula, but when they get to their destination, it turns out that this is not quite the case. Walker is not interested in jokes about sex or alcohol or youth promiscuity, on the contrary, he tries to make the initial pastime of the characters as boring, inadequate and quarrelsome as possible. It turns out that this collection of classic beauties, in which classic youth types in the movies are viewed, is not so fun, bright and friendly as it seems at first glance, which in turn leads us to the fact that we will not get a traditional quartet of uncouth beauty-sexual macho-good girl-virgin-good romantic boy. Before the onset of the zombie problem, all the director’s jokes are based on the personal qualities of the characters and their relationships, which are far from the unrestrained youth frenzy of slashers and comedies. These are quite simple and understandable moments of interpersonal interaction, which with their subtle humor prepare for the fact that the author of the film will use other ways to laugh, already more brutal and cynical.
The peculiarity of Walker’s idea is that he has only one zombie. There is no invasion or apocalypse, no alarming news reports and instructions like “where to shoot if you see a walking dead man.” Strictly speaking, the world is not even sure that these creatures really exist, and the characters share his opinion until they encounter the supernatural by personal example. “Life” zombies helps to highlight many interesting moments of a person’s reaction to his own transformation into the walking dead. So he's crazy about other people's brains, but he hasn't lost his. He's immortal, he doesn't feel pain, how will he and his loved ones react to it? According to the director, they will be happy and it is impossible to say that such a reaction can be challenged. The thoughts of his characters about what they faced are the basis for the cynical humor that Walker will apply for most of the film, and the way he grabbed a stupor and ridiculous attempts to resolve the situation in every possible way looks not without interest. Writers should also be praised here - almost every phrase is labeled, sharp and has a double bottom - in a normal situation it would not be anything funny, but in this particular one it is full.
One of the journalists who interviewed the director said that "A Little Zombies" is a mixture of different humor - farce, irony, comedy errors, wordplay. But not every method the authors use suits this film. Despite the absence of jokes about sex and weed, the picture still has poor-quality humor about not the most pleasant bodily fluids and gays, as well as humor parody of the brutal character with the eternal “good zombie – dead zombie”. The last topic has already been fairly muzzled, and the first, albeit less popular, has never had much success. Such things lower the film in the eyes of the viewer, and may eventually even be remembered more than the desire of the bride at all costs to have a wedding in order not to embarrass herself in front of three hundred guests, which successfully intersects with zombie motives. However, despite the fact that the characters of “A Little Zombies” are not smart, it is clear that of the dozen ways to use the brains proposed by the director, he himself used them for his intended purpose, even if sometimes he goes too far in trying to make the viewer laugh.