Zombie Honeymoon
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It’s no Shaun of the Dead, but Zombie Honeymoon is a pretty good Zom-Rom-Com flick. It’s a rarity in the genre as well — a zombie movie that takes itself and its audience seriously. Focusing on the romance of a newlywed couple and the drama that ensues when the groom joins the ranks of the walking dead, Zombie Honeymoon is everything the title claims it is, and more.
As the film opens, Danny (Graham Sibley) and Denise (Tracy Coogan) have just tied the knot — she clad in a prophetic red wedding gown, and he giddy with excitement about spending their entire honeymoon getaway in bed. They burn rubber, driving away from the chapel with the obligatory tin cans rattling from behind their “Just Married!” car. Surf music blasts from the radio as they pull up to their seaside honeymoon cottage. Life just doesn’t get any better than this… Not even when you die.
A few hours later when a rotting zombie comes upon the sunbathing couple and attacks Danny, a living nightmare begins. Of course, no one knows it was a zombie — it’s assumed the assailant was a diseased man, and somehow the infection has killed Danny. He flatlines in the hospital, and Denise is beside herself with grief until… Danny gasps. He’s alive! The doctors and nurses are stunned, but the patient checks out fine and is allowed to go home. Soon enough, strange things begin to happen: Danny’s skin is peeling and sloughing, he can’t remember important events from his life, and worst of all, he has an insatiable hunger for living human flesh.
Writer/director Dave Gebroe has done something different with the zombie genre, bringing it down to a more believable level and exploring the same “What if?” type questions as have been explored in vampire movies, werewolf movies, and ghost movies. While Zombie Honeymoon is shown from Denise’s point of view, we get a chance to explore how Danny might be feeling and what he’s thinking about his horrible new fate.
Unfortunately, Zombie Honeymoon never comes fully to life. There are too many long, overly monotonous scenes that wind up going nowhere; it seems that Gebroe may have been a little too close to, or in love with, his material. Amateurish cinematography and bad framing also bring the film down. But the story is solid, the acting is good, and it’s a fresh look at an old horror subject. It’s definitely worth a look for genre fans.
Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson
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Zombie Honeymoon is currently in limited release, migrating from festival to festival. Playing with it is wicked little 10 minute cartoon short called Dentist (directed by Signe Baumane). Soonest, it will be playing at