"Zombies Ate My Prom Date" Review

In the span of little more than 40 years, Zombies have become one of the most recognizable monsters worldwide, alongside the likes of werewolves, vampires, and ghosts. So, naturally, the shambling undead have shown up in a lot of movies, and also naturally, tons of them suck. The number of quality zombie flicks (like Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and 28 Days Later) can be counted on two hands, while the number of terrible ones can be counted on forty.

In particular, the 1985 cheese-fest Return of the Living Dead has essentially become a synonym for "crappy zombie movie", it's only claims to fame being it's introduction of the concept of zombies constantly moaning for "brains!" and it's truckloads of unintentional comedy. Miraculously, Return of the Living Dead was a hit, and spawned many sequels and knock-offs-- all of which were of even worse quality, with hokey acting and dialogue, bad special effects, increasingly ridiculous plot devices (Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies? Flight of the Living Dead? Hard Rock Zombies?), and extensive use of stock sound effects and lame '80s synth pop.

As you might expect from the title, Zombies Ate My Prom Date is a direct mockery of those movies, taking a random setting -the school prom- and adding zombies. Luckily, writer-director Alex Yi is not nearly as inept as the crews of the films he's skewering, and has created quite a wonderful little movie.

Sometime in the near future, a horrible zombie apocalypse has begun- loved ones are turning against each other as the hordes of undead drastically increase in number. But this is small potatoes for the students of Hamilton High School's Senior year, who have far more important things to worry about- namely, the school prom.

Apparently completely oblivious to the zombie menace, friends Brewster ("The Geek", played by Seth Harrington), Herman ("The Pervert", played by Blake Hogue) and Chubsy ("The Fatso", played by Jason Rogel) have concocted a plan: to finally introduce Brewster to his four-year crush, Cassia ("The Beauty", played by Liz Jamieson). But there are two very special guests at the prom that night: Tess ("The Bitch", played by Aleta Loffer), a girl infected with the zombie virus, and Ernie ("The Psycho", played by Mark Tuura), a troubled boy with plans to murder everyone who's ever bullied him.

As one would expect, everything quickly goes to hell, with Tess infecting the principal, Mr. Bloomsfield, and several other students. Soon, the school is overrun with zombies, and a small team of survivors --consisting of Brewster, Herman, Chubsy, Cassia, Cassia's friend Donna ("The Blonde", played by Jamie Angelise), Donna's date Brett ("The Jock", played by Chris Morgan), and Ernie's would-be accomplice, Burt ("The Rebel", played by Jason Hand)-- must band together to try and survive the night.

Zombies Ate My Prom Date is extremely well-written, with numerous memorable scenes and dialogue ranging from clever to intentionally over-dramatic. The main cast does an excellent job overall, but particular standouts are Chubsy, Donna, and Herman, none of whom take the horrible situation as seriously as they should. Chubsy seems incapable of thinking of anything except food, suggesting hiding spots solely for their stash of corn chips and relating seemingly everything to McDonalds in some way; Herman is a lovable geek, who spouts internet memes ("Leerooooooooyyy Jenkiiiiiiiins!") and argues with Chubsy over whose superhero is better; and Donna is as ditzy as her hair color stereotypically suggests, never really fully understanding anything that's going on and complaining about her night being ruined.

In an interesting method of getting around a prohibitively low budget, the film is made with two different methods: the bulk of the film is in traditional live-action, while some of the more bloody or complicated scenes are shown in great-looking anime-esque animated sequences. It's a nice touch, and fits surprisingly well with the rest of the film.

Of course, Zombies Ate My Prom Date was made by amateurs, so on occasion there are a few slip-ups. The quality of the sound fluctuates wildly; sometimes the music and sound effects mix perfectly, other times the music is so loud the dialogue is unintelligible. Sometimes an overdubbed line blends in well, other times it's glaringly obvious. In addition, some of the acting by the supporting cast is a little off sometimes; though, given the nature of the film, it's hard to tell whether it's regular bad acting or intentional bad acting.

Overall, Zombies Ate My Prom Date takes two overdone premises (high school romantic comedy and a zombie apocalypse) and fuses them together to make something brilliantly unique. Hopefully, it will get a wide enough release to allow most of you readers to see it, but for now, you can go to the URL on the film's poster up there for more info.

Keep your eyes out for this one, folks, because Zombies Ate My Prom Date gets an

Awesome!