Invasion of the Undead

The eye-catching poster and action-packed trailer led me to this one. The plot is pretty simple as a young woman spots a glowing zombie in her bathroom and hires two young guys running a paranormal investigators business. Turns out these aren't just zombies, but disciples of Z'athax, an intergalactic demon summoned by the girl's distant relative 100 years earlier. Lensed outside of Atlanta, Georgia, THE NEON DEAD surely doesn't lack in ambition. Writer-director Torey Haas splashes all kinds of haunted house CREEPSHOW-esque lighting and fills the frames with interesting black-lit demons, zombies and monsters. And thankfully, Haas didn't do "totally '80s retro style!!!" or found footage that way too many horror films are doing nowadays. Where it falters is the moments between action scenes. You can definitely tell they are going for a BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA sarcastic vibe. Sometimes the comedy works (like one sidekick being a severed head) and sometimes it doesn't (the lead doing a poor version of Bill Murray's lascivious Venkman in GHOSTBUSTERS). There are moments of sheer low budget ingenuity (the cosmos where the stop motion monster sends people is well conceived) and moments of sheer low budget blunder (modern trappings shown in a flashback set in 1912). It was still good to see low budget filmmakers actually trying though, even if this is closer to THE VIDEO DEAD than THE EVIL DEAD in terms of classic status. I look forward to seeing what Haas does next.

Only watch this if you are a fan of B movies. The special effects are meant more for coding than realism, which they fully embraced. I love movies where actors take a ridiculous script and throw themselves in fully, and these folks pulled it off. The story itself has some relatively new takes on old elements. The main point seems to be to highlight the difference between magical zombies contrasted with demon possessed corpses, with no brain eating ghouls in sight. I really enjoyed this one as a fun diversion, especially since I tend to sound a lot like the talking head insisting on the importance of language in discussing fictional monsters.

It's a movie that is fun to watch and entertaining in a schlocky dumb fun way. Is it bad? Yes. But it knows its bad and has fun with it. It does not violate the one rule of self aware schlock. It's not boring. Watch this movie with the mindset that it's all for fun and you'll have a good time.

After encountering a hideous ghoul in her bathroom, Allison Hillstead (Marie Barker) calls in the professionals for assistance.

Enter paranormal investigators / video store employees, Desmond and Jake (Greg Garrison and Dylan Schettina), exterminators of the undead. Once on the premises, the two spook hunters quickly realize that the situation is far worse than they had expected.

THE NEON DEAD is a micro-budget horror / comedy that uses lots of vivid colors -both paint and lighting- to create its hellish monsters and atmosphere. Taking the budgetary constraints into account, the effects aren't bad.

While the acting is as hit-and-miss as some of the dialogue, there's still something endearing about the film. The final battle, using both puppets and stop-motion, is certainly fun to watch!

Is it the most astonishing movie ever made? No. Is it made with gobs of cheeeze? Yes, but, if the proper allowances are made, you just might be entertained...