Amor em Tempos de Zumbi

Loved it! It is kind of Shaun of the Dead kind of flick, a romantic zombie comedy, but pretty fresh and funny and entertaining and cool. The actress that plays Deb, the lead character, is fantastic, charming and funny. Ray Wise has a great supporting role. The music, the sound, photography, effects - all together made a very good movie in every level. The director played nicely with clichés, made a very light but exciting movie with zombies, and since there is so much zombies these days, it is a great success to make a movie that can stand out. Well done in every way! I saw it at the closing of Dead Lake festival in Palic, Serbia. Highly recommended.

I enjoy searching through the 'customers also liked' section of streaming services. It's a great way to find hidden or underappreciated gems. I was pleasantly surprised to find N.o.t. L. D. During a late-night search. I've now seen it a bunch of times.

Deb, the titular character (played by the lovely and talented Maria Thayer), is a classic underachiever who, prodded by her pal on a night out, chats up a good looking fellow a few levels above her on the social scale. The next morning, Deb and her new friend are forced to deal with a zombie outbreak, her new friend's snobbish family, and an extremely jealous girlfriend.

The comedy, mostly supplied by Thayer, plays a greater role than the human-munching and zombie-killing (although there's a decent amount of gore).

The movie was made on a shoestring budget, financed by a Kickstarter campaign. This is another element I liked about the flick; it's one of those movies were the creators worked with a tiny budget and still produced an entertaining movie.

Highly recommended.

Night of the Living Deb (2015)

** (out of 4)

Deb (Maria Thayer) wakes up after a night of drinking in the apartment of Ryan (MichaeL Cassidy). The two quickly try to play off their night but soon they're back together when they realize that a zombie apocalypse has broken out.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEB isn't the greatest horror spoof ever created but there are a couple nice laughs that help keep it moving but there's really not enough here for a feature-length film. I think this here would have worked much better as a short film because there's really no plot here as we basically see Deb, a rather nerdy person, falling in love with the good looking Ryan and the majority of the film has her being mistreated or taken advantage of. Oh yeah, the other thing is that she is very sarcastic and this is where the majority of the laughs come from.

Thankfully both Thayer and Cassidy are good in their roles and this certainly helps since we spend the majority of the running time with them. Thayer is the star here and she turns in a nice performance but I still felt that only twenty-percent or so of her jokes actually worked. The film could have benefited had there been something more going on. Perhaps more in-jokes or at least something more to hold the viewer's attention.

As it stands, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEB has a creative title but it's too bad the film itself wasn't more creative.

At least for what it is. It's no "Shaun of the Dead," of course, but given that "Shaun of the Dead" is the de facto "Godfather" of zom-com (and horror comedy in general, for that matter), it's hardly fair to compare this movie to it.

The movie lives and dies by its lead actress, and more so than most -- she's clearly the standout performance (which is a shame when a movie has the great Ray Wise) and she handles the comedy, physical and verbal, very well. Not to mention being able to pull off cute even with the trite "beautiful girl playing plain by having messy hair and unflattering clothes" dynamic. (I almost said "beautiful young girl" but a look at her IMDb page reveals that she was *40* when this movie came out. Unless there's an error on IMDb or this movie was shelved for a very long time before release, she's aged really, really well. I mean, good Lord, I would have guessed mid-to-late 20s, tops.)

The movie's main flaw is that it doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be straight-up comedy or camp, something independent/low budget comedies occasionally suffer from. It vacillates between the two, which can cause abrupt changes in comedic tone. Trying for both just hurts the flow and coherency of the movie. Overall, though, while it wasn't the greatest movie in the world and I did find the comedy/camp comedy transitions jarring, I quite enjoyed it, and it was solidly written and acted (primarily by the lead actress, as noted above), so I have no complaints about the time spent watching.

Chompcrc here. This is actually a pretty good movie. It hits all the major plot points, and I laughed out loud on numerous occasions. The lead actress is a revelation, and should definitely be way more famous than she is. Sure, a bigger budget Hollywood production would have looked and felt better, but this is as good as anything Hollywood heavy hitters are doing in the genre. Good job folks.