ApoKalypse is an animated comedy zombie film that was written, directed and produced by Lutz Geiger, who was also the animation supervisor. Described as an ultra-low budget 3-year passion project, this comedic horror doesn't always hit with its style of humour, but has a consistent charm that made me more than happy to stick around for the sensible seventy minute runtime.
Set in America, Apo (Chris Koehne) works at a burger takeaway in a local mall with best friend Jamal (Ravin Wong). One day, rat poison comes to be advertised as a cure for the ongoing Covid pandemic, and idiots in their droves come to believe this to be the case. Unfortunately, the rat poison not only doesn't cure Covid, it also happens to turn people into flesh hungry ghouls, seemingly only infecting Caucasians. With the mall swiftly overrun with these zombies, Jamal, Apo, his love interest Cho (Ao Mikazuri) and her family must work together to try and find a way to make it to the staff exit and escape. Meanwhile, the U.S army have cordoned off the complex, planning to use drastic measures to stop the outbreak.
The animation style is basic, but it has a unified feel to it that everything seems consistent in style. The 2D look reminded me a bit of South Park, a bit simpler maybe, but I thought the look of this was good. There was even a brief 3D section inserted towards the end for a few minutes, that part in particular looked pretty great. The characters all had a vaguely creepy unnatural look to them, but that worked for a comedy horror.
The humour was occasionally to my liking, but there were plenty of moments that didn't appeal, being a bit grotesque at times. There were a few jokes about bodily functions, drug use, and some gross sex joke moments that included full frontal zombie nudity. That type of stuff I wasn't on board for, but there were also amusing moments. None of this was laugh out loud, but again, the style was consistent and parts made me inwardly chuckle.
The protagonists were fine, they served the purpose as people to root for, even if there wasn't much character development for them. The zombies meanwhile were plentiful, but they were often not that much of a threat. I did enjoy the large numbers of these and the often gross fight scenes that sees survivors and braindead alike being ripped apart. As for the plot, it was very simple, but what would you really expect from a zombie movie? Despite being an animation, this had a lot of the story beats you would expect from a film of this genre, a gradual ramping up of danger, and an over the top finale. The social commentary aspect was interesting enough, taking a look at America's treatment of minorities though the lens of the 'Karen' stereotype. It made a change to have the heroes all be non-white characters, I did feel having this based around the Covid pandemic felt a little outdated, though obviously, at the time this was first thought of, that was still relevant.
I enjoyed ApoKalypse, but it didn't always appeal. I thought some of the character design to be crude, especially when it came to the female characters, and I would have been happy without any nudity. That was all done to personal preferences. For something described as ultra-low budget, this was far more watchable than expected, the David Firth/South Park feel was often neat, and the basic animation worked surprisingly well with zombies as the main focus.
SCORE:
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