Zoombies (2016) · 7:38am May 3rd, 2018
Have you ever heard of this band called Hey Ocean? I hadn't. Truth be told someone sent me a link to a cover they did of Be My Baby and I thought, that was pretty good. It doesn't surpass the original but it had its own little thing going for it. So one day while buying lawnmower parts I decided I needed to pick up some music. I'm still waiting on Twisted Sister but I did manage to get the Hey Ocean cd Is in along with a fuel tank.
Apparently my copy of the CD Is is from some library. According to said library Hey Ocean is: "pop in the truest and most traditional sense of the word. On IS irresistible hooks entwine with dreamy keyboards and crystal clear guitars. Each voice gets time in the spotlight, rounding out the sound with the imprint of three distinct and dynamic personalities." It then goes on to say that the songs offer nods to folks like Michael Jackson and Fleetwood Mac. So on a drive I popped it in and promptly got stuck in traffic.
Well... I don't know about Fleetwood Mac and Michael Jackson as far as nods go. I do know that the band loves water, Canada and about five songs in I had to take a wicked leak. I know that I lost track of which song I was on after awhile. I started to yawn. In a weird way it was like listening to Cannibal Corpse but slower and more Jack Johnson-like. It drifted along and when it passed on the most I said was, "Well that was a thing." At least I got my fuel tank.
Speaking of passing on what happens when a bunch of monkeys suddenly drop dead then come back to life at an endangered animal sanctuary? Well you get a case of the Zoombies. This is the Asylum movie that dares to ask the question, "Hey what if Jurasic Park didn't have dinosaurs or a big budget and instead was about diseased undead animals some of which are guys in a costume?" Throw in your typical cavalcade of characters, the jock, bitch, preppy guy, the precocious kid and you've got this movie.
For what it's worth the actors do try hard... sometimes too hard. The special effects while special aren't as bad as they could have been. There's some effort here. They even get silly with some of the dialog and situations in this movie. Towards the end the aviary scene is kind of funny in its own way.
The real problem with this film is that for a movie that's under 90 minutes long it drags introducing people, scenarios, back stories and so on that mean nothing. What they should have done was cut to the chase get a bunch of blood packs and spray the screen red. Go Evil Dead 2 with this thing, have a smaller cast and if you DO need a bigger cast don't introduce me to them. Just have them get chewed up. I hate it when we get too much plot getting in the way of the movie.
Anyway, your mileage may vary on this one. With the proper BAL and maybe some wise ass friends this could be a solid time killer before you get into the real action that evening. Probably not the action some folks may hope for but ... stranger things have happened.
Stats:
20 dead bodies, 0 breasts, syringe to the head, shelf crushing, monkey through the chest, eye ripping, bird pecking, lion eating, death by giraff, head crushing, gun fu, fire fu, bat fu, gratuitous sign language scene, gratuitous commercial, gratuitous cops.
Shout outs:
Alan Aster as Gage for being the preppy guy who apparently can ride a zip line and has the pick up line, "Whats a young republican like yourself doing here?"
Ione Butler as Lizzy the chick who is the badass and manages to pull some interesting faces.
Lala Nestor as the kid who can beat marsupials to death with apparently her toys.
Looks like it would be a fun stupid movie to watch.
You know Hey Ocean is fronted by
Rainbow Dash/ApplejackAshleigh Ball, right?4852836
I thought the name looked familiar and it explains why the link was sent to me. That said I think everyone in that band sang a few songs. Even so it's nice she has a hobby. Hopefully they tighten up the songwriting and figure out how to make their pop pop.
4852694
Eh... again with smart ass friends who can rip the movie a little and some fermented libation it could work. I'll never understand why they just don't do the kero syrup, red food coloring with a little chocolate sauce and coffee grounds mixed in instead of digital blood. Heck on a super low budget effort just make it red and spray it everywhere. People would get into it.
I never did get around to checking out Hey Ocean. It's too bad that it wasn't much to write home about. Ingrid Nilson of Maud/Limestone Pie fame has a band these days too; gotta check that out.
Anyway, Jurassic Simian Park sounds adequately dumb for a few laughs. I might have to hold onto that fake blood recipe you dropped, too; don't know when I'd use that, but it strikes me as a potentially funny thing to have in the proverbial back pocket.
4856736
Well, Ingrid looks like she's in a band. I've heard her song Have It All. In my opinion her voice is okay not great and the song is an appropriate length. Overall it was very generic especially for the genre and really needed to be fleshed out. It was almost like they enjoyed part of a Nine Inch Nails song kept that part, then added some vocals. But that's just me, I'm probably not the target audience.
Hey Ocean isn't a terrible band. They play their instruments fine. They sing okay though nothing I'd call a hit. In all honesty if you took a song or two and put it in a play list or on a mix tape or something they'd probably be fine. So if you're still curious about them do that.
If you uses that recipe for fake blood remember that the coffee grounds are good for making it look like it's starting to scab over some. Also depending on where you have the wound you want to change the color of the blood. Generally speaking the deeper the wound the darker the blood so you'd work more chocolate sauce into it.