Better Off Undead
Starring: Drew Schuldt, Dale Devries, Jordan Brown
Written & Directed By: John Pata
Grade: B
As far as horror independent films, zombie films are the way to go with a low budget. All you really need is a an army of zombies and a few buckets of blood. Filmmaker, John Pata, did precisely just this with the money from his pocket. The film was made for around $700, shot at local places in his hometown of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Having the home court advantage really helped them out as not too much of the budget had to go to their locations.
The story takes place on a bright sunny day. Work is over and it is time to have a good time with friends. Just as the front door opens, zombie’s attack. The house is infected with the living dead, blood stains around their hungry faces. The victim makes a run for it, but it is useless. The story picks up with this boy’s friends, Marcus (Schuldt), Chris (Devries), and Evan (Brown). They are all friends, but Marcus and Chris tend to gang up on Evan as he is more on the nerdy side. He has a love for Xena: The Warrior Princess, while the other two are more aggressive guys. They are going to have to learn to get along as they will have bigger problems soon. The zombies are coming to them and they are only one bite away from becoming one of them. At first, Marcus is almost in denial over this and attempts to knock the zombies out with sports gear, which is clearly hopeless. So they go back to Marcus’ house to hide out. Soon Marcus finds out that his roommate has been attacked. A zombie bit her and she is now affected. The culprit is still lurking around his house and manages to get his friend next. Tripping down the basement, Marcus is desperate to get out of there alive. With his newly twisted ankle, it is the living vs. the dead.
The end scene is very funny. There is a man that hits Chris with his car as he is trying to escape. Not only does this knock Chris out, but this man is completely unaware of his surroundings and becomes a tasty snack for the zombies that are coming as a complete shock to him. Marcus’ room is full of movie paraphernalia, particularly horror film posters, even Dawn of the Dead. Chris tells Marcus that he would have thought he would love this since he loves the genre so much. He tries to escape from the real life horrors that are around him. Marcus has a fantasy dream making out with a woman he desires. When that quickly comes to a hault, he continues drinking, to numb the pain. They just sit at his house rather than come up with a plan to get out of there. His reasoning is that he doubts that zombie’s can climb stairs, yet one ends up chasing him down the stairs after he attacks two of his friends. These things are all part of safety nets. Horror movie in themselves can be safety nets. They allow us to display terrifying situations without us having to face our fears or overcome the circumstances. In real life as in this film, just sitting around telling yourself it is going to be okay, only leads to further crisis.
The best thing Better Off Undead is the gore and the kill scenes. Bits of bloody body parts are shown as we hear the zombie’s crunching on their meal of delectable human flesh. The blood is in all different forms, making you constantly wonder what that blood might be covering up, making the zombies seem more intense and grotesque. One thing that the film does to go beyond this, is the sound effects of the zombie‘s actions. We actually hear the chewing, which shows us an even more animalistic side to these beasts that were once your average every day humans. Pata describes Better Off Undead as “Dawn of the Dead meets Mallrats, without the mall”. That type of Jay and Silent Bob humor is definitely here between the guys. The humor is very male driven, which makes sense since the cast and crew are almost completely male aside from some female zombie extras. So this is a good film to watch with a bunch of your buddies. Of course, I can’t talk about the comedy without mentioning the title, notably a play off of the hilarious John Cusak 80’s comedy, Better Off Dead, signifying the comedic dialogue that plays with the horror around it.
Better Off Undead is a short film at 29 minutes. There is a significant amount of bonus footage to make the adventure even longer. The feature, Good Thing I’m Undead, is behind the scenes footage of the making of the film. It is noted that it is almost as long as the entire film, so even when the movie ends the film keeps on rolling. Some of the bonus features are Cooking on Set, Better off Gay, and The Drinking Game. My favorite was probably the Shopping with Satan one. After getting $6.66 back after a purchase on the first day of filming, this serves as an omen. They go on a quest to find the numbers 666, as they take this as a good luck sign since it is a horror film after all. They find toy telephones with the numbers as well as numerous horror film of course. Overall, this is a very fun a goofy bit. Better Off Undead was really just made for fun and there weren’t even any plans for it coming out on DVD. The film is self distributed now though and you can get a copy as well as other merchandise here.
- Kelsey Zukowski
