Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

The filmmakers behind Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse apparently realized that the zombie genre (even the comedic ones, as this one attempts to be) is kind of played out, and they needed to throw in some things we haven't seen before.  So, what we get in this movie are zombies bouncing on trampolines, legendary comic Cloris Leachman trying to bite someone in the ass, and one of the film's young heroes teetering out of a window while hanging onto the dick of a zombie.  You have to admit, those are new ideas.  Whether they are good or funny ideas is debatable.

I must report that I did not laugh once while watching this movie.  It is not funny, thrilling or exciting at any point of time.  The obvious inspirations for the screenplay (credited to four different writers) are Zombieland and SuperBad, with perhaps a bit of Shaun of the Dead thrown in for good measure.  Those movies had smart and funny dialogue, plus characters we could get behind.  This movie gives us non-stop gross out jokes and obnoxious characters that we want to see get chomped by the zombie hoard.  It's an annoying movie that seems to think graphic slo-mo shots of heads exploding is the height of comedy.  This movie's idea of a joke is to have a zombie suddenly start singing a Britney Spears song.  While I do think that this could be funny in theory, it would have to build to something more.  It never does.  Nothing in this mess of a movie does.

Our heroes are three teens and best friends who have been Scouts since they were six-years-old.  They include nice guy Ben (Tye Sheridan), the horny and foulmouthed Carter (Logan Miller), and the dorky Augie (Joey Morgan).  They have spent their entire youth under the guide of the Dolly Parton obsessed Scoutmaster Rogers (David Koechner), but as they are approaching their Junior year of high school, Ben and Carter are starting to have thoughts about quitting the Scouts.  Carter is excited about the idea of ditching merit badges for parties and women, but Ben knows that the sweet doofus Augie will be crushed, and is more torn.  When one of the popular kids (Patrick Schwarzenegger, son of Arnold) unexpectedly invites Ben and Carter to a secret party on the same night that their Scout group is planning a camp out, the two guys decide to sneak away in the middle of the night after Augie has gone to sleep, and go to the party.  Naturally, Augie catches them in the middle of their escape, and is hurt by their betrayal.

The guys head into town for the party, and find it strangely deserted.  Unknown to them, a disaster in a nearby science lab has started the Zombie Apocalypse, and now just about everyone in town is one of the walking dead.  Ben and Carter regroup with Augie (Scoutmaster Rogers has joined the zombie ranks after he is attacked first by a zombie deer, then a scientist from the lab), and must now find a way to get to the people at the party they were headed for before the zombies do, or before the military shows up to nuke the entire town and wipe out the zombies once and for all.  The young heroes are joined in their battle by Denise (Sarah Dumont), a cocktail waitress at a local strip club who knows how to handle a shotgun.  Honestly, this is all a set up for a lot of uninspired sex and bodily fluid gags.  And just to make sure the movie is really offensive, it actually tries to shoehorn in a message about friendship, loyalty, and believing in yourself.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse might have worked if it had a sense of satire, just as the previously mentioned Zombieland and Shaun did.  Instead, it's comprised of nothing but lame physical comedy that director and co-writer Christopher Landon (best known for writing the last few Paranormal Activity movies) doesn't know how to stage or pull off.  None of the jokes hit, and the audience ends up watching with stone-faced silence as the actors try to pretend that this is funny, instead of actually saying or doing things that are funny.  There were a number of scenes that I think were intended to get laughs, but honestly, I was just puzzled as to what the joke was supposed to be.  In one instance, the camera holds on an elderly lady zombie crossing the street on a motorized scooter.  Why is this image alone supposed to be funny?  A real movie would have given that lady something to do.  And in yet another instance, our young heroes venture into a crazy cat lady's house, and find themselves surrounded by zombie felines.  Again, the movie stops at just the image of this, instead of building to an actual laugh. 

We start to feel sorry for the actors up on the screen as the film grows seemingly obsessed with delivering no laughs whatsoever.  I understand that it is traditional for young actors to do a movie like this early in their careers, but they had to have known what they were getting themselves into just by reading the script.  You also wonder what comic veterans like David Koechner and Cloris Leachman are doing here, especially since the movie treats both the actors and the characters they play as an afterthought.  I like to think that maybe they had fun on the set.  That would at least explain their presence here, as the script offers them no favors.  Nobody in this movie gets to make an impression, not even the zombies, who are not gross or comical enough to stand out.

This is the kind of movie where you laugh at the title alone.  Maybe the poster art brings out a chuckle.  Those two aspects are clearly where all the creative energy behind this project went.  Everything else about it is dead in the water.  This is a repellent and ugly little comedy that never really shocks like it wants to.  It just offends us with its stupidity.

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