Little Monsters

An Aussie zombie movie? That's the first question that comes to mind when you hear about Little Monsters. But make no mistake, the only thing little about this film is its 90 minutes of runtime. The next question would be the odd casting choice of Lupita Nyong'o in the lead role. But anyone who saw - Us - Jordan Peele's terrorizing mystery-horror from earlier this year will attest to Nyong'o fitting the bill. And boy, does she!

Cinematically speaking, and with no pun intended, zombie films have been done to death. And yet, for some strange reason, 2019 has no less than three mainstream zombie films that all share a common thread. The first one was The Dead Don't Die, a curious deadpan horror-comedy staring Bill Murray and Adam Driver. Little Monsters, though not groundbreaking, is instantly and entirely gratifying over the latter film. You won't see a zombie for the first twenty minutes, and that's because writer-director Abe Forsythe is setting up a warmhearted story with some insane situational humour to boot. We follow failed rock band singer Dave (Alexander England) who is forced to live with his sister and nephew Felix after a botched attempt at trying to get his girlfriend back. All hell breaks loose in the literal and cinematic sense when Dave accompanies Felix and his kindergarten class on a field trip to an amusement park. For Dave, his nephew and the other kids, survival isn't an option and that's because they have no idea what they're up against. No one in this film has heard of the '47 Rules for surviving the Zombie Apocalypse' either, something that was groundbreaking to zombie movies in the hilariously action-packed Zombieland (2009), and whose follow-up Double Tap is the third zombie film for the year as mentioned earlier. But then no one in this film (and even the audience for that matter), would think salvation would come in the form of a super sweet kindergarten teacher - Caroline.

While that's a que for the Neil Diamond song of the same name, Nyong'o, in a bright yellow dress and an equally sunny disposition is literally gold as Caroline. With the ukulele Caroline's been empowered with, I'll even say that Nyong'o has the one up on Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music. But can you imagine Julie Andrews in a blood soaked dress? Between singing Taylor Swift's Shake it Off, hatching an escape plan, and assuring her kids that the blood on her dress is nothing but "strawberry jam", Nyong'o plays an atypical role for a zombie film but in a very refreshing way. Besides anchoring the film, you really start to appreciate her incredible range as an actress and why her Oscar winning debut role in 12 Years a Slave was so well deserved.

While much of this film is inspired by George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead and its sequels, Forsythe infuses Little Monsters with his own brand of crass comedy, some utterly tasteless and even crude with the inclusion of Josh Gad as a child TV personality. Gad is super bad, albeit intentional with profanity, but also a scene stealer when it comes to iterating how conflicted celebrities can be in showbiz. The film also has questionable origins to the zombie outbreak in an undisclosed location in Australia, where the amusement park is conveniently set next to a 'US Army Testing Facility'. This doesn't live up to the Romero films that inspired it, but as a zombie film, Little Monsters is cuteness overload with a lot of heart and a lot of cheer, and also blood and gore to match.

Wrong in so many ways but with a wicked and often hilarious sense of adult comedy - Lupita Nyong'o is an absolute delight!

I think it's true that this could be the most enjoyable zombie comedy since "Shaun of the Dead", there are as many great bits of black comedy as there are those of the feel-good kind. While the laughs do come from familiar places, a lot of factors, including the two leads, makes the movie very worthwhile.

"Little Monsters" is a fast paced, simple minded yet witty zombedy adventure. It starts off a lot like a black comedy, lots of crude but actually funny jokes, no zombies yet & Alexander England gets introduced as the first of two highly enjoyable leads. The other is a quickly rising favorite of mine - Lupita Nyong'o, who has established herself as a strong presence on screen in both darkly serious and comedic roles/movies. I hope she sticks around the horror genre, because she would be missed in the community. As the story unravels, the comedy continues, but shifts slowly, showing off moments both sweet and scary. Quite a few feel-good, sweet sequences and I had no choice but to root for our heroes. Even all the kids did their best thing, adorable little creatures. I'm happy to say that aesthetically & technically "Little Monsters" is very well done, vibrant, playful and bloody. I've found that it's quite easy for a good comedy to make you sport the rose colored glasses, because they are undeniably very entertaining and can steal your heart sometimes - this excuse is the intro for me stating that I can't pick on this movie much, it was a wild and awesome ride. Some flaws I noticed were, for example, a drop in pacing around the middle part of the movie, the afore mentioned familiriaty of the concept, jokes, flow, structure, but all that didn't stand in the way of "Little Monsters" being a blast.

Not a lot of great zombedies nowadays, maybe even less than once a year a solid one comes around, so I encourage You to pick this up, get into the couch and enjoy the adventure. My rating: 8/10

Right, well I didn't even know about "Little Monsters" prior to getting a chance to sit down and watch it. And being a huge fan of all things zombie, of course I had to sit down and watch this movie.

Turns out that "Little Monsters" from writer and director Abe Forsythe was actually quite good. It was a nice surprise and was actually a nice addition to the zombie genre, especially because Abe Forsythe managed to incorporate the comedy so well into the storyline, without it tipping over and becoming a downright comedy.

The storyline was good, nicely paced and actually had some good things to it. Sure, it was a zombie story, so you know what you are getting. But the movie does offer odd bits of things that you don't usually see in zombie movies, such as the kid's TV show host, children being a major part of the storyline, people singing during a zombie outbreak, and so on.

As for the zombie make-up, well, I must admit that they did a great job. The zombies looked good, and it wasn't, thankfully, not just people painted gray on the face and forgetting about the neck and hands. No, "Little Monsters" actually had decent zombie make-up and prosthetics, and even had enough gore in it to make it have that special zombiesque feeling to it. It was good.

And the movie had a great cast. Lupita Nyong'o really carried this movie quite well, and she was nicely cast for the role of Miss Caroline. Alexander England, playing cousin Dave, was also quite good. However, I must say that Josh Gad, playing Teddy McGiggle, was actually hilarious in the movie, and his character was just a blast.

If you enjoy zombie movies, and want something that deviates from the usual end-of-the-world-struggling-to-survive formula, then "Little Monsters" is a refreshing addition to the zombie genre.

I am rating "Little Monsters" seven out of ten stars.

I have deliberately been avoiding zombie-comedies over the past few years, because there has been a massive over-offer of those since, say, 15 years and because - let's face it - the vast majority of them of utter rubbish. Initially, I also hadn't planned to see "Little Monsters", but I had to occasion to attend the premiere at the Brussels International Film Festival, and it's always a lot more fun to watch such a type of film alongside a big & enthusiast crowd at a festival. Perhaps I just was in very tolerant mood, but Abe Forsythe's "Little Monsters" is very entertaining and has a surprisingly large number of positive aspects going for it!

The plot is fair but standard: a stereotypical loser in his late twenties, the kind that still hopes he will eventually make it as a rock star, joins his nephew's class on a field trip to the petting zoo to impress the boy's stunningly hot teacher Miss Caroline. During the day, zombies escape from a nearby military research facility and stumble their way to the zoo. Evidently, the selfish rock-musician will have to turn into a genuine hero to safeguard all children from the flesh-hungry living dead!

What I really appreciated about "Little Monsters" is that the comedy is primarily generated through the characters and via situational humor, instead of via cheap slapstick and over-the-top gore like in most "zomedies". The funniest parts of the film are even in the first half hour, when there isn't a zombie in sight yet and the story still centers on Uncle Dave taking care of his 5-year-old nephew and trying to win his girlfriend back. Another very imaginative aspect is that Miss Caroline (multi-talented beauty Lupita Nyong'o) spontaneously decides not to tell children that they are trapped in the middle of a zombie outbreak. Instead, she explains it's a sort of game and part of the excursion, which makes "Little Monsters" sort of the "La Vita È Bella/Life is Beautiful" of zombie movies.

Of course, "Little Monsters" does remain a derivative zombie flick and thus cannot escape the use of several dreadful cliches and idiotic twists. Sure, in a country as enormous as Australia, the military zone where they experiment with zombie viruses has to be located at less than 500 meters of a children's animal park! The zombie outbreak is the most random and unexplained one in history, by the way, but I don't mind that too much. You are also warmly invited to just accept that ravenous zombies are not capable to tear down a simple wooden gift shop, crawl through a gate with massive holes or apprehend the slowest driving tractor in the world. But the biggest and most irritating cliche that Forsythe included, and the only one that actually bothered me, was the character of Teddy McGiggle. We get it now: when in mortal danger, the masks of sympathetic celebrities fall off and they turn out to be loathsome, cowardly and egocentric bastards. Don't worry, though, as they always get what they deserve.