There's No Such Thing as Zombies (2020) - Comedy Horror Film Review

Directed by Eddie Bammeke (Talk of the Dead) and written by Michael Haberfelner (Talk of the Dead, A Killer Conversation), There's No Such Thing as Zombies is a horror comedy that felt like it would have worked a whole lot better as a short film than as a feature length one. Due to this I found it quite a struggle to get through, a shame as the zombie genre is by far my favourite one.

The film takes place within a world in a which a miracle drug for depression has very recently been discovered to have the unfortunate side effect of reanimating the bodies of heavy users of it. This has resulted in it being banned in the UK, though is still in use elsewhere, in particular the USA. To combat this threat, an organisation named the Z.I.A (Zombie Investigation Association) has been formed, though its members are all inexperienced. After her ex-boyfriend Paul (Rami Hilmi - Artifacts of Fear, Colin) arrives at the apartment of the very dense Carlotta (Luana Ribeira - The Eschatrilogy: Book of the Dead), she welcomes him in, unaware he is actually a zombie. When her husband Colin (Rudy Barrow - Dead Walkers: Rise of the 4th Reich) returns home he is alarmed to see Paul, and realises immediately he is undead due to Paul being responsible for the man's murder in the past.

The main issue I had with There's No Such Things as Zombies is that there is only really the one idea used to carry the film, but the long length for this type of idea (clocking in at ninety five minutes) is just too extended for this to work well. It essentially boils down to a three person single room drama with division between Carlotta and Colin, due to the former not believing Paul is really a zombie, and the later knowing full well that he is. This got old really fast, so it seemed crazy to me that the back and forth of this conflict was what the whole movie was based around. I found Carlotta to be intensely annoying due to how unbelievably stupid she was. Colin was no better as he frequently physically abuses his wife, someone who is happy to take the punishment in her simple minded obliviousness that this is far from the right way to behave. Much of the humour comes from her interactions with Paul, seeing his many attempts to bite her as him just playing around.

It seemed at first that the two Z.I.A members who appear at the film's start would have a key role to play. These two (played by Debra Lamb and Scott Hillier) instead spend the majority of the film standing outside the apartment, their power as Z.I.A members appearing to be extremely slight. It did lead to some actual humorous moments of them constantly being startled by gunfire happening in the apartment, but trying to act like what is going on in there is none of their business.
Bizarrely, the very best storyline in the film was taking place on a TV screen that the protagonists occasionally turn on. This was set in a UK news studio in which an American high-up member of the zombie causing drug company (Lynn Lowry - Wolf Hollow, Cynthia) is trying to convince everyone that zombies don't exist, despite increasing evidence that isn't the case.

With much of the humour not to my tastes there wasn't much here to keep my attention, I really struggled to pay attention to the dull meandering story. I'm never keen on jokes about sex, which is what the main form of humour is about here, and I found the characters all unlikeable. Being an indie film, and being a comedy, the make-up effects for the zombie were very slight. Paul has white make-up on his face, but the rest of his body is free of make-up. The only blood to be found in the movie is very obviously computer generated. The actual number of undead featured in the movie is a small handful, in total I think there were only around six or seven, with the majority of the run time just focussed on Paul, who being tied up for nearly the entire film doesn't actually do much. The set had barely any detail to it, not seeming like an actual apartment, the floor didn't even have carpet on it. I did like the use of sound effects, such as when characters suggest something (such as firing an imaginary gun) and the sound of the real thing being inserted.

I love a good zombie film, I even love bad ones, but with There's No Such Thing as Zombies I found myself getting increasingly bored, I found it a chore to sit through for review. There are little moments that worked well, such as the subplot set at the news studio, but all in all, I just couldn't shake the feeling that this would have worked so much better as a twenty to thirty minute short film, as there just wasn't enough to warrant this being feature length. There's No Such Thing as Zombies has been released on streaming services worldwide.

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