This movie was possibly set up to be an incredible success. I'm no expert, so maybe it is. Maybe there is something I'm not seeing. I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy it though, because I absolutely did. The movie moves extremely slow, much like zombies. Obviously. The humor is very dark and you can almost miss most of the jokes. I can easily say, however, that this is exactly the kind of movie someone would cast Tom Waits in. A true treasure and possibly one of the strangest and most confusing humans to ever exist. I go into this movie somewhat familiar with the 'meh' reviews it received. But hey, I've enjoyed movies rated WAY worse than this. Also horror/zombie/comedies don't generally get that high of a rating from your regular folk anyway. Except maybe Zombieland. And God, do I love me some Woody Harrelson. We've got Bill Murray and Adam Driver as cops in this small town of Centerville. They "do most of the work" but they threw in Chloe Sevigny as the third police officer in town. It's quite hilarious throughout because none of them actually do any work it seems. They drive around slowly. They talk slowly. They can't make decisions even between all three of them. We've got Tom Waits who plays Hermit Bob. I could hardly tell it was him until he said something cause he is just hiding in the woods the entire time. Which I mean for a zombie movie, isn't exactly a dumb idea. Tom plays the same character I've seen him play in so many movies. He is the weirdo who no one understands, but he seems to understand everything. So Tom is the only one who really knows what's going on before it all happens. I'm not even going to refer to the characters as their names, just their real names. The news on TV and on the radio is reporting to the people of the town that the Earth has slipped off it's axis. Even though "the experts" try to convince everyone that nothing is wrong, of course all the superstitious weird ass small town characters know that it's the end of the world. To keep this shorter and with less spoilers I'm just going to hammer off the rest of the incredible lineup they had in this movie. They've got Danny Glover, most famous in horror as one of the officers in Saw. Obviously more recognizable for the Lethal Weapon series. Steve Buscemi, playing a crazy farmer who is accusing Hermit Bob of stealing his farm animals. RZA plays a UPS delivery man. Tilda Swinton plays the new manager of the town funeral home. And quite a few others. I mean practically anyone in the movie is a well known actor. But it leaves a lot of empty space and lack of character development. Like a lot of the scenes with less important characters really contribute nothing to the plot and actually just take up time and have nothing to do with the ending. Tilda Swinton. I love her but goddamn is she terrifying. She can really look like an alien if you want her to. Her character is this very private, independent, mysterious woman who also has crazy sword skills. Which will obviously be useful for what's to come. Iggy Pop as a zombie though? Pretty iconic. The zombies walk around slowly repeating what they wanted when they were alive. Iggy Pop's character pops into the diner and after a quick meal starts demanding "coffee... coffee". For anyone that didn't know, the creator of this movie, Jim Jarmusch, also did three short films in the early 00's called "Coffee and Cigarettes". A very cute homage, I thought. Especially since Buscemi, Iggy, Tom, Bill and RZA all starred in this series. Of course Iggy Pop as a zombie wants coffee. After the murder scene was called in Danny Glover's character says, "What could have done this? Wild animal? Perhaps several wild animals". Each police officer enters and returns back outside and says the exact same thing, three times in a row and it just made me laugh so hard. Such a stupid joke. Later in the movie even the news anchor reports the attack as, "though we are unsure what it was we believe it could have been a wild animal, or several wild animals". It's almost like a Scary Movie style joke but it still got me. Most of the movie is just Bill and Adam driving around slow as fuck in the cop car around the town doing absolutely nothing. "Should we tell the citizens that there's a zombie attack?" Adam asks. "Nah we'll get Mindy to do it," replies Bill. Amazing. So lazy. "So how do you kill a Zombie?" Bill asks. "You gotta kill the head. Complete decapitation," Adam replies. This quote gets used multiple times throughout by different characters and it's just clever to me because they're obviously trying to portray that all these towns people think exactly alike. When they get back to the police station, Tilda shows up with her samurai sword slashing zombie's heads on the whole way. She volunteers to watch the police radio and computer. Which not a single person has called the station once. I mean thinking back I think everyone's phones stopped working anyway. So I don't know why she'd have to stay there. Tilda logs into the computer at the station while the three useless cops drive slowly around town just looking and zombies walking around. She types some crazy ass CSS Code shit into the computer and smiles. A pivotal moment after Chloe jumps out of the car and kills herself essentially, Bill asks Adam why he's so calm. And he's like, "Oh didn't you read the script?" UGHHHHH. I don't know how this happened to me two nights in a row that I got some weird meta movie but this just ruined everything for me. Wes Craven did it amazingly. At this point it's not even like Bill/Adam are acting as themselves their just police officers who are maybe actors or I don't know? And then out of nowhere a giant UFO comes into the middle of the graveyard, and Tilda Swinton arrives and gets sucked up just like the true fuckin' alien she is. Tom Waits has some terrible, terrible confusing attempt at a metaphorical dialogue in the background while Bill and Adam are trying to fight all the zombies. It's not enlightening at all and it really explains absolutely nothing. It's so many words and it's like 2 minutes long and nothing at all is learnt.
"This ends badly doesn't it," Bill asks. "Yeah." Did I enjoy this? Yes - the first hour. Maybe it's over my head. Maybe it is good. Maybe it needed an ending re-write. At least we know for sure that Tilda Swinton is a fucking alien.
Comments