Zombies

MadS (2024)

Kids! Don’t do drugs!

Unless you want to slowly transform into a cackling, bloodthirsty Deadite.

Writer-director David Moreau and his camera crew of French daredevils have assembled MadS, a micro-zombie tale that maintains a breathless pace, thanks to it being filmed in one exhausting take!

For 89 minutes nonstop minutes, we tag along with Romain (Milton Riche), a swinging teen (?) on his 18th (?) birthday, as he visits his dealer driving a classic Mustang convertible.

After snorting several lines of a dark red powder, Romain scores a few bindles of the stuff and blasts off through the French countryside in his sweet ride, soon to be tripping balls.

At this early stage, we almost envy the lad. It’s his dad’s car but Romain cuts a dashing figure behind the wheel, like Jean-Paul Belmondo or something.

As the powerful drugs take hold of his system his special birthday night rapidly degenerates into hell. He inadvertently gives a ride to a feral madwoman who seems to be on the run from nefarious forces.

Romain, who is expected to be at a blowout rager for his birthday, instead brings the nonverbal, unstable refugee to his father’s fancy house—and loses track of her.

The constant motion of the narrative gives MadS a major advantage in holding our attention. I realized while watching it, that I was standing up for much of the time. That’s called tension and it just keeps coming.

There’s a particular scene with a woman riding a scooter, trying to outrace an infected friend who is madly pursuing on foot and calling out to her that burns like a fuse.

The visual excitement is top drawer throughout. Moreau’s sensibility is slick, sleek, and sleazy, and MadS rates highly as finely-crafted, Old World, Eurotrash with a pedal that’s always on the metal.

The movie dovetailed nicely with my reading a trilogy of post-apocalyptic books by English author Rich Hawkins (The Last Plague, The Last Outpost, and The Last Soldier; recommended!) that are really grim.

And so is this. But it kicks major ass.

Die Alone (2024)

Screen history repeats itself, as Carrie-Anne Moss is once again paired with an amnesia victim (Douglas Smith) searching for answers in Die Alone, a Canadian post-apocalypse drama crawling with a verdant variety of zombies that have gone to seed.

Writer-director Lowell Dean makes sensible use of Saskatchewan’s panoramic grasslands to anchor the action, following a few hardy survivors stumbling through a barren landscape largely stripped of humanity thanks to a plant-based virus that’s amped up the vegetation to lethal levels.

Ethan (Smith) and Emma (Kimberly Sue Miller) are a young couple on the run when the environmental shit hits the fan. Despite making a plan to meetup at a remote cabin in case they get separated, Ethan’s trauma-induced amnesia keeps getting in the way, and the two predictably lose track of each other.

Luckily clueless Ethan gets rescued by rugged survivalist May (Moss), who agrees to help him locate his lost love and provide reasonable room and board in exchange for farm labor.

Instead of gratitude, Ethan steals May’s truck and goes off to search for Emma on his own, but the absent-minded protagonist requires frequent rescuing. That means many scenes begin with Ethan regaining consciousness in different locations, usually covered in blood, sweat, and ears.

The zombie community is represented by hungry humanoids that have been reclaimed by the earth, each with its own distinctive look fusing foliage and fashion. The makeup department deserves the donuts for creating such intriguing new creatures.

Strangely, Dean mostly employs the undead as set dressing, rather than as a serious threat, limiting their fright potential to a precious few moments.

But it’s not a dealbreaker.

That Die Alone succeeds as a movie is largely due to the unbreakable strength of its central relationships and the filmmaker’s fully developed arsenal of appreciation for those that came before him.

Cinema nerds will eagerly recognize shots paying tribute to everyone from John Ford to Terrence Malick to Sam Raimi. Dean’s script, though maddeningly fractured and episodic, leads to a crushing finale that I’m still chewing on like old Milk Duds.

Be like the cows. Keep chewing. It’s making more sense all the time.

The Gorge (2025)

So many genres, so little time.

When the creative team in charge of a film project gets carried away trying to please each and every imagined audience member, the results are usually a load of crap.

The Gorge, written by Zach Dean and directed by Scott Derrickson, seemingly utilizes this kitchen-sink approach, tossing a zesty, messy melange of romance, action, horror, and conspiracy theory that’s a just a tad over two hours in length.

And somehow it works pretty damn well as a super-engaging popcorn flick!

Levi (Miles Teller) and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) are two highly trained snipers from different countries assigned guard duty at opposite watch towers on either side of the enormous and mysterious titular gorge.

The mercenaries are armed to the hilt and instructed not to contact each other, but the need for company proves too much for Levi and Drasa, and soon they’re flirtatiously firing rounds, demonstrating their skill and accuracy, while a Ramones record plays.

“I guess this qualifies as a Meet Cute,” I whisper to Mrs. Sharky.

Though separated by a chasm that occasionally spits out monstrous hybrid humanoids called Hollow Men, the hired guns overcome logistical challenges and use a zip line to hook up and become not just a couple, but an elite and capable survival team.

This comes in handy when their military handler (Sigourney Weaver) decides they can no longer be trusted.

Once the protagonists figure out that this version of the future has no future, their decision to join forces is logical and inevitable. Besides, they’re a hot couple, and Drasa is clearly the aggressor, eventually rescuing Levi from an unexpected plummet into the abyss.

Through waves of decent monster attacks and fabulous fire fights, we actually grow fairly attached to Levi and especially the badass Drasa, which helps keep the viewer grounded during the mood shifts and infrequent talky interludes.

The Gorge is also a very impressive example of world-building, an important component to any successful popcorn operation. The mise-en scene has been carefully considered providing a foundation of future realism that looks like it was designed by the prison industrial complex.

No wonder no one want to hang around!

Warm Bodies (2013)

Mrs. Sharky wanted to watch a romantic comedy. Uh oh.

I said, “What’s in it for me?”

This is the type of give-and-take situation we domesticated adults must consider every single day, and believe me, it ain’t easy.

Fortunately, my painstaking research turned up Warm Bodies, a zesty Canadian zom-rom-com that actually checked all the boxes for both our discerning tastes.

What a find!

Written and directed by Jonathan Levine, and based on a novel by Seattle writer Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies is the story of R (Nicholas Hoult), an unusually thoughtful zombie who wanders around an airport with his fellow undead shufflers, after a plague or virus or something turns a majority of the population into brain-eating ghouls.

“What am I doing with my life?” he wonders in narration. “I’m so pale. I should get out more. I should eat better. My posture is terrible. I should stand up straighter. People would respect me more if I stood up straighter. What’s wrong with me? I just want to connect. Why can’t I connect with people? Oh, right, it’s because I’m dead.”

One fateful day, R impulsively rescues Julie (Teresa Palmer), an armed forager, from a pack of his hungry brethren and takes her to safety. This single act of compassion from a walking dead human changes everything we thought we knew about the entire zombie genre.

Indeed, it starts a movement of humanism among the dead, as long-deceased folks begin to feel—different. Something is stirring inside.

Warm Bodies could fit snugly inside AMC’s The Walking Dead universe as a diverting subplot. Julie, the daughter of General Grigio (John Malkovich), leader of the militaristic human resistance falls for R, the zombie who ate her boyfriend’s brain.

R and Julie? Try Romeo and Juliet. There’s even a balcony scene.

I’m as surprised as anyone that I dug Warm Bodies as much as I did. It’s funny, well-written, kinda scary, and uplifting as hell. That’s not just a difficult balancing act, it’s a rarely occurring cinematic event.

A horror movie that you can snuggle your honey through.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Funny thing, I went to the theater and saw this when it came out. I remember liking it well enough, but Prince of Darkness is a relatively small-scale production for John Carpenter.

His previous run of films included Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Escape From New York, and Big Trouble In Little China, so perhaps I was missing the star power typically provided by Kurt Russell and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The real reason, I now suspect, is that Prince of Darkness is more akin to Carpenter’s earlier, grittier Assault on Precinct 13, a no-name thriller about cops fighting off a crowd of vengeful gang members while trapped in a shuttered police station.

The cast of Prince of Darkness, including vintage TV stars Jameson Parker (Simon & Simon), Thom Bray (Riptide) and Dirk Blocker (son of Dan Blocker/Hoss), are similarly under siege, this time by a seemingly synchronized horde of hobo schizophrenics led by a menacing Alice Cooper.

Carpenter’s resident authority figure Donald Pleasence plays Father Loomis (Doctor Loomis’s twin brother?), a nervous priest who discovers an infernal device in the basement of an abandoned Los Angeles church.

The ancient artifact, which resembles a moldy lava lamp, appears to contain some kind of organic material that’s rapidly developing consciousness after lying dormant for untold centuries.

Loomis calls in Professor Birack (Victor Wong, Egg Shen from Big Trouble) and a group of his top physics students to study the strange canister and possibly decipher the accompanying doomsday grimoire also found on the premises.

How could they know they’d be hastening the return of the titular character, even providing a human vessel for its gestation period?

Nope, didn’t see that one coming.

I would expect college students to be dopey enough to take on this insane extra-credit assignment, but distinguished scientists?

All hell proceeds to break loose, as the assembled eggheads fall victim to having unholy water squirted in their faces from newly made zombies, or getting torn apart by the mute mob of street people that have surrounded the accursed church.

Professor Birack and the increasingly agitated Loomis deduce that the evil essence contained in the canister is now fully awake and influencing people on a subatomic level. Like ants working together toward a common goal.

You get it? Carpenter? Ants?

Carpenter is at his most diabolical depicting a wounded world, teeming with swarms of furious insects, that’s clearly reached end time, requiring an act of selfless sacrifice to save the day and keep the devil—and his creeping minions—away.

The dour final frame of Prince of Darkness indicates that he won’t be gone for long. A hell of a movie.

From (2022-23)

Back to the small screen for a moment, if I may.

Amazon Prime temptingly offers the opportunity to pig-out on obscure and overlooked horror television from every port of call imaginable. After a bit of grazing. I’d highly recommend From, a series filmed in Nova Scotia that’s captured the imagination of myself and Mrs. Sharky.

It should ring several bells if you’re a fan of Lost, The Walking Dead, and Wayward Pines, as a four-pack family unit drives its RV into one of those cursed communities that you can never leave.

To make matters worse, everybody has to be inside and locked down before darkness falls, because monsters (kind of like vampires, kind of like zombies) come out of the woods at night seeking to gain entry into the town’s various residences to murder and mutilate the town’s various residents.

The pale whispering ghouls surround a home, endlessly cajoling and compelling its occupants to throw open their doors so they can be properly displayed as part of a gruesome tableaux come the morning.

On the upside, houses are free, but you might have to clean up the viscera from the most recent undead onslaught.

Still a good deal, if you ask me. I bet it’s cheaper than Salem’s Lot.

Vehicles arrive from a disparate assortment of starting points, and after an interval of freaking out, travelers must decide whether they want to reside in the town itself, under the severe protection of Sheriff Boyd Stevens (Harold Perrineau), or find some floor space with the free-loving bohemians of Colony House, where the Sheriff’s brooding, model-handsome son Ellis (Corteon Moore) holds court.

The two camps represent humanity as ludicrously polarized despite a shared goal of not wanting to end up as chew toys for a mob of malevolent entities.

Series creator John Griffin does a stellar job of knitting hard horror elements into a character-driven show. The creatures that stalk the populace of this nameless community aren’t driven by a biological need to feed.

They’re just evil and cruel!

The cast of “castaways” on From range from complaining assholes to compassionate caretakers, including a tech bro, an amusement park engineer and his traumatized family, an unstable clergyman, a spooky waitress with voices in her head, and a crayon-coloring man child who’s been exiled in this particular limbo the longest.

As for the bigger picture, Boyd and company must solve the mystery of how they all got there and devise methods of escape from a location that isn’t on any map.

But as one character says bitterly, “We’re not on Gilligan’s Island. We can’t fix the radio with coconuts.”

From keeps enough intriguing subplots at play (e.g., where is the electricity coming from?) to reel in even the casual viewer. At present, there are only two seasons available.

I’ve seen the first one and I’m completely hooked.

The inevitable comparisons to Lost are well warranted. Executive producers Jack Bender and Jeff Pinkner both worked on that genre-defying show.

Perhaps they belong to the same universe? I’ll know more after my next season session.

Editor’s Note: The addictive theme song to From is a minor-key, dirge arrangement of “Que Sera Sera,” performed by the Pixies, that sounds like Lee Hazlewood.

One more reason to tune in.

Off Season (2021)

Old School creepy goes a long way in my book. I’m always in the mood for an immersive plunge into nightmare waters.

Off Season is Old School creepy, a diabolical downward spiral with definite shades of Carnival of Souls and Dead and Buried tellingly layered into a Lovecraftian landscape.

Writer-director Mickey Keating, a former Blumhouse intern, has manifested another one of those damned tourist trap towns that visitors find impossible to leave behind.

Marie (Jocelin Donahue) is the daughter of reclusive actress Ava Aldrich (Melora Walters), who recently passed away and was laid to rest on the small coastal island where she grew up.

Funny thing, before she died, Ava told her daughter specifically to not allow her body to be buried there.

Funnier thing: Two lawyers she’s never met inform Marie that her mother changed her will, and that she wanted to be buried on the island.

Shortly thereafter, Marie receives a mysterious letter from the caretaker of the cemetery instructing her to come at once to address the recent vandalism of Ava’s grave.

Once she and her whiny husband George (Joe Swanberg) arrive on the island, the trap springs shut and the real nightmare can begin. Marie discovers the community is a hotbed of pagan idolatry and that many years before the villagers made a deal with “a man who came from the sea.”

Off Season comes foggily shrouded in a fatalistic sense of inevitability that dwarfs our petty terrestrial concerns, offering us a glimpse of life everlasting.

And we all lived happily ever after in thrall to Cthulhu, or someone like him. Well, maybe not so happily. Let’s say creepily.

Shock Waves (1977)

Long before Dead Snow thawed out a battalion of Nazi zombies, this low-budget creeper, written and directed by Ken Wiederhorn (Eyes of a Stranger, Meatballs II), spent a few decades bouncing around the Late Night Spook Show circuit.

Shock Waves stars horror vets Peter Cushing and John Carradine, as well as Luke Halpin from Flipper, all grown up into a blonde, mustachioed male lead, who must rally a crew of castaways marooned on an island awash in goggled zombies in SS uniforms.

Cushing brings a convincing accent, dandy scar makeup, and complete authority to his role as an exiled Nazi commander forced to live in an abandoned luxury resort on a nameless island somewhere in the ocean.

Guess he couldn’t make it all the way to Brazil.

Cushing patiently awaits the arrival of the soggy soldiers formerly under his command, who should be returning from Davey Jones’ Locker any day now.

Editor’s Note: Cushing plays Admiral Tarkin in Star Wars—the very same year!

John Carradine doesn’t get to do much as Ben, the cranky charter boat captain, but we do get to see him in a bathing suit. (Rrrrowr!)

Comely Brooke Adams stands out as Rose, a tourist who also looks smashing in swimwear.

The underwater photography, particularly when the Nazi zombies snap into formation and smartly march toward the surface, is eerie and strangely captivating, jarringly punctuated by Richard Einhorn’s dissonant electronic score.

No, they don’t eat flesh, but these genetically altered stormtroopers are consumed by a desire to kill, and they have thoroughly adapted to the life aquatic.

So what if they look like a techno band? Good stuff!

Ghost Team (2016)

I don’t generally award points for amiability, but somehow Ghost Team managed the feat.

A bunch of goofy ghost chasers get a shot at a real spook surveillance mission, where they must confront dark forces and come together as a team.

As you’ve already guessed, it’s a crew of unhappy misfits looking for something meaningful in their failed lives. Team leader Louis (Jon Heder) is a nonentity who owns a copy shop in a strip mall.

Louis’s depressed BFF, Stan (David Krumholtz), lives on the couch, unable to get past the delusion that his fiancee was abducted by aliens—on their wedding day.

“Why else wouldn’t she be there?” he asks Louis between sobs.

Every team needs a tech wizard, so we also meet Louis’s nephew Zak (Paul W. Downs), a sarcastic prick with access to killer gear, thanks to his job at a Big Box electronics store.

Security guard Ross (Justin Long) is a reasonably brave moron with a military fetish, and Victoria (Amy Sedaris) is a sketchy cable-access clairvoyant looking to get paid.

Finally, there’s Ellie (Melonie Diaz), the pretty Latina who works at the nail salon next door to Louis’s print shop. She signs on to do hair and makeup since everything is being filmed.

The various members of Ghost Team suffer from comically low self-esteem related to their crummy careers, except Stan, who doesn’t have one.

“You remember when you were a kid, and you dreamed one day you’d own your own print and copy shop?” Louis asks Ellie. “Me neither.”

Underdogs. Nerds. Nobodies. The odds are certainly stacked against them. Spirits are lifted with the arrival of matching yellow Ghost Team t-shirts. Sadly, they couldn’t afford the sweet jackets.

Through a timely tip from a copy shop customer, Ghost Team stakes out a remote, boarded up farmhouse and bust out Zak’s “borrowed” ghost-busting gadgets.

Instead of paranormal pratfalls, they stumble upon a meth lab staffed by junkies, who look and act like traditional zombies, leading to a splashy paintball shootout.

Jon Heder provides earnest strength as Louis, the fledgling leader who shows genuine concern for his newfound comrades.

Written and directed by Oliver Irving, Ghost Team is a consistently amusing haunted house caper with heart, one that works best as a team-building exercise. No, it’s not very intense, but if you’re not careful you will be won over by a winning cast of losers.

One Dark Night (1982)

The dueling subplots in One Dark Night don’t actually connect until about three-quarters of the way through the movie, but when they do, something magical happens. The big subplot eats the little subplot.

Welcome back to the 1980s when teenagers were actually much older than they look. Golden boy Steve (David Mason Daniels) has got to be pushing 30, and his Queen Bee Bitch ex-girlfriend Carol (Robin Evans) is from a similar demongraphic.

Carol is the leader of a girl gang imaginatively named The Sisters, comprised of Leslie (E.G. Daily, forever known as Dottie, from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) and Kitty (Leslie Speights), a sassy black teen with a toothbrush in her mouth.

Hmmph. Three girls. Some gang.

The latest initiate into The Sisters, Julie (Meg Tilly, in her debut), is Steve’s new flame, so Carol cruelly demands that she spend an entire night in a mausoleum!

To add to her discomfort, Kitty gives Julie Demarol, a powerful painkiller, instead of the sleeping pills she promised. All the better for her to be in a tripped-out state of mind when the other girls sneak back into the mausoleum to frighten her with their lame ghost costumes.

Mean girls. Always been a thing.

The other narrative involves the death of a famous Russian psychic named Raymar, recently discovered alongside a pile of dead girls. The psychic’s daughter Olivia (Melissa Newman) is warned by a mysterious albino (Donald Hotton) that her father had figured out how to drain “bio energy” from people and save it up to return from the grave.

Which he does.

By the time Raymar, crackling with psychic energy, kicks his way out of the crypt, Julie is high as a kite and her tormentors are getting mobbed by freshly revived corpses.

Coffins come springing out of the walls revealing folks in various states of decomposition who quickly dogpile on Kitty and Carol, smothering them in rotting flesh. Ewwww!

It’s this twisted, nightmarish conclusion to One Dark Night that rescues a small-scale, perfunctory movie that’s also bereft of blood and guts. A modest round of applause goes to writer-director Tom McLaughlin for successfully pulling his fat out of the fire.

Moral of the Story: Even if you’re a budget-strapped director with maxed-out credit cards, you need to deliver on some horrific level to get respect around these part.

Editor’s Note: Fans of 60s-era Batman will be disappointed in the amount of screen time allotted to Adam West, as Olivia’s husband. He doesn’t get to do shit.