Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (2018)

Zombies: the unrelenting, ravenous horde of the living dead hell bent on feasting on the still-warm brains of the living. And Disney: purveyor of family friendly, iconic animated movies with a predominantly young audience. Not really 2 things that you feel can go hand in hand right? I mean, can you imagine a zombified Mickey Mouse chowing down on the brains of Goofy? I'm sure if you'll look hard enough you'll find it on the internet somewhere. But what I did find on the internet somewhere was that in 2018; Disney gave us Z-O-M-B-I-E-S. A musical science fiction movie, a DCOM, where the kids of a completely zombified community town go to school at Seabrook High, and it's therein that we follow the story of Addison; a living, and Zed; a living dead. Ok, so not entirely in keeping with the traditions of spooky season, granted, but when else is there going to be a better time for me to cover a Disney movie that features actual zombies? Never.

After an incredibly short animated sequence, that is low key great and entire anime should be made using it... we learn that the town of Seabrook experienced an accident at a power plant that turned half it's population into brain eating zombies. But after "the government" developed a way to control zombie impulses using the Z-band - the once festering, bloodthirsty legions of the undead are now able, more or less, to live perfectly normal lives. We are introduced to Zed (Milo Manheim) a zombie teen lad who has aspirations of joining the Seabrook High School football team, and Addison (Meg Donnelly) a normal (human) teen lady who has aspirations of becoming a cheerleader at Seabrook High but is plagued with short white hair that she hides beneath a blonde wig which I'm sure won't become a major plot point later... after the first musical number gets out of the way, Zed claps eyes on Addison for the first time and immediately falls in love with her, because of course he does, but Zed, his pals Eliza (Kylee Russell) and Bonzo (James Godfrey), along with the rest of the zombies quickly learn that they are confined to the basement and no extra curricular activities with the rest of the school are allowed. Meanwhile, Addison's cousin Bucky (Trevor Tordjman) quickly establishes himself as the movies main dickhead when he profoundly refuses to acknowledge the zombies as "like us" and by us he means normals... and after Addison and Zed end up trapped together briefly in a zombie safe room, and get friendly, it's Bucky who bursts in a separates the pair, warning Zed to stay away from her. After the first day and the second musical number gets done, Addison makes the cheer team along with her friend Bree (Carla Jeffery), whilst Zed gets sent packing from football tryouts, basically just because he's a zombie. As Addison begins to learn just how persecuted the zombies are just for being zombies, she begins to make efforts to bridge the gap, getting friendly with Zed and inviting him and his friends to the cheer rally, promising to conceal their friendship from Bucky. And it's at the cheer rally that, after Bucky tries to coax the zombies into reacting by taunting them with fire - something they are inherently scared of for reasons not really explained - that Bonzo goes crazy damaging Zed's Z-band, but he manages to compose himself just long enough to tackle his way though the crowd and save Addison from falling. Something which hugely impresses the football coach and earns him a spot on the team with Zed also negotiating the zombies can now eat in the canteen with the normals, which does not sit well with an eavesdropping Bucky... During lunch, Addison admits to Bree she has a crush on Zed, and when Zed calls her over she does the polite thing and goes to speak to him which does not sit well with Bucky's cheer captains, who drag her away and threaten to outcast her to the "unpopular's" table, and as Addison leaves the canteen embarrassed, Zed follows her and the pair share a musical number basically about how they wish their friendship could just be embraced as normal. At the first game of the season, things initially go bad for the team as the rest of them seem content to let Zed get taken out during every play, but after half time, Zed convinces Eliza to tinker with his Z-band, allowing him to switch it off and tap in to his animalistic zombie side some more which allows him to easily overcome the opposition and win the game for Seabrook High, much to the delight of Addison, but not so much to Bucky... As zombies suddenly get a massive serge in popularity in the school, thanks to Zed winning all the football games for them, Bucky makes Addison choose between being on the cheer squad or hanging with the zombies with Addison having to choose cheerleading or risk letting her parents down. Despite not being able to publicly show her affection for Zed she manages to get a message to him to let him know she's still "cheering for him on the inside." Zed, in return, gets a message to Addison to meet him at the "barrier" (the barrier between Seabrook and Zombietown). After they meet up, Zed takes Addison to a 'Zombie-mash', basically a nightclub dance off, where he admits to Addison that he's manipulating his Z-band to help him win games, but he later also complains to Bonzo that it's having an effect on him... Addison meets Zoey (Kingston Foster), Zed's little sister who wants to be a cheerleader herself when she grows up, and also wins over Eliza and the pair make friends, but before Addison can leave, curfew hits and she gets picked up by "Zombie Patrol." who escort her home. Her parents, discovering she was hanging out in Zombietown with a *gasp* boy?! Naturally go bananas and demand to be introduced to said boy or Addison is no longer allowed to be on the cheer team. The following morning, Bucky learns that Zed has been winning games by tampering with the Z-band and enlists the help of his cheer captains to steal Eliza's laptop and disable the boost. Meanwhile Zed, learning that Addison's parents want to meet him, adjusts his Z-band to look normal and manages to impress Addison's parents enough that she is allowed to cheer again but as they sit in an ice cream parlour on a date, Addison reveals she isn't happy that they have to be different people in order to fit in. At the final game of the season, Addison and Bree turn the rest of the cheer team against Bucky by cheering for Zed leading to Bucky trying to throw them off the team but with no effect, meanwhile Zed is one more touchdown away from winning the game but when Bucky's cheer captains disable his Z-band he has to do it without his zombie powers, which he does, but only seconds after scoring, his Z-band gets disabled, with Bonzo and Eliza's bands also getting disabled. As the 3 go full zombie absolute chaos breaks out, but the "Zombie Patrol" are able to bring the situation under control and neutralise the trio quickly before taking them away with zombies now being outcast from Seabrook again. After Addison get's a song out the way about being strong, she pulls off her long blonde wig to reveal her shorter white hair underneath much to the shock of her parents, Bucky and the crowd who immediately just start booing her for being different. After Bucky purges everyone from the cheer team who isn't anti-zombie, and takes what's left of the team to the finals of the cheer Championship, Zed and Bonzo discover notes left in Eliza's locker planning to sabotage the finals in revenge for being outcast again. Making their way to the venue, Zed and Bonzo manage to convince Eliza not to carry out her plan, with a little help from Addison, who now proudly has her white hair on show permanently. However Bucky and the performance goes terribly and they completely fail, and as the team begins to fall apart, Zoey runs on to the stage and begins to cheer on her own. Inspired by Zoey and with a little pep talk from Addison the rest of the crew assemble and begin a cheer dance of their own and although Bucky initially refuses to be a part, he too is eventually won over and joins the others in the dance off. However ultimately, for some reason... they don't win although in the credits it's revealed they did succeed in finally breaking down the segregation between zombies and normals.

Before starting this blog, there was no way in hell I would willingly subject myself to a musical movie (ok, one exception: The Greatest Show) but this is like what, the 4th? 5th? one I've covered. And it was... well it was decent. For the most part it hits all the right notes no uh... pun intended. It is very much a formulaic coming of age movie and very much driving home the message that you don't have to fit in, it's ok to be different, e.t.c all that well meaning stuff which is right but I always feel like there's a sinister undercurrent to it. Like it's ok to be different within the boundaries that society allow y'know... and I still feel like there is suppression to a degree... I still feel like transphobia is very much a thing and I still feel like society isn't accepting of foreign nationals but uh... I'm getting a bit deep and political. Anyway.

So yeah, there is definitely a blatant under current that runs beneath this film. The zombies are punk-esque with stitched up clothes and spikes and the normals are all pastel colours and sensible clothes. There is very much a visual paraphrasing of straights versus punks from the 70's going on here, or at least that's the general vibe I was getting. And although it's well meaning enough, the central message of the movie; that normals should be more accepting of zombies is only achieved when the zombies have to make the effort to win over the normals, it's not like the normals actually come round to accepting them based on their own merits alone... I'm reading too much into it again aren't I?

So ok, thematic issues aside, I was at least engaged with this movie. It's storyline wasn't particularly fresh but it was at least distinctive enough that I wasn't entirely certain how it was going to play out but it ultimately reaches the same conclusion that most of these coming of age movies reach: the couple end up together and their differences are overcome in the pursuit of forming a relationship. But I would be lying to you if I said I wasn't at least a little bit invested in the movie and I did genuinely enjoy it. It's not my usual wheelhouse and I didn't care for the songs so much but I did feel like it was a decent movie and it was entertaining.

Both leads... or all three leads really if you want to count Trevor Tjordman as Bucky who pretty much shared as much screen time as the other 2... did a pretty good job. I felt like Milo Manheim was maybe trying a little bit too hard at first and initially he came across quite goofy and cheesy, but by the end of the film he had won me over and he was alright. Meg Donnelly equally was decent, and perhaps far too good to be in these made for TV movies. I can genuinely see her going on to bigger things. To be honest though I mostly found myself drawn to Kylee Russell who was playing Eliza who only really had something of a bit-role in this, but there was something special about her and I can see her going on to be in much bigger and much grander roles.

I mentioned earlier that the songs were not really for me, and that's more a me thing than a crit on the movie. I struggle with musicals at the best of time, just not really my thing, and here the songs were very much of their time despite being less than 4 odd years old, they still felt very much on par with the pop and dubstep-lite fusion stuff that we were getting back then, but watered down considerably enough so that they could fly in a Disney production, but I don't doubt they would have struck the right chord... no uh... pun intended again... with the target audience and they weren't terrible and cheesy per se, at least not to me, they were just pretty normal, pretty expected productions for a movie of this time period.

No complaints really in anywhere else, production-wise it was spot on and the only really telling moments that you were watching a made for TV movie was the x4 odd moments it cut to black at quarter length points throughout the movie. Otherwise, production values were right up there with any other Disney live action cinematic release. There was no skimping in the cinematography section, or the set design and although the general costuming of the zombies was kept fairly simple, it sorta worked by not overcomplicating it. And I don't doubt the differences were supposed to be subtle anyway to reinforce the movies central message; there isn't that much difference between a zombie and a normal.

This was a different one to a degree, it took a kind of horror / supernatural approach to a musical which I guess is not completely original, but at a slightly different tangent in comparison to the regular high school musical productions that pepper the Disney+ movie list. Although despite having that slightly different varnish, it was still at it's heart a very formulaic coming of age movie with a strong and often repeated moral message. Very much a Disney movie MO no doubt, but there is very little here that takes the movie off the beaten track. It still plays things very safe and doesn't stray into more edgy territory despite adopting the zombie theme into it's narrative. It was still enjoyable enough though and despite maybe only creeping into spooky season territory just barely with it's zombie theme, I wasn't disappointed by it and don't feel like I just got 1 and half hours of my life cheated out of me. Weak 3 out of 5.