Mad Zombies

"The Mad" is without a doubt meant to be bad. There can be little doubt that both the cast, the director, and most likely the screen writer foreordained this to be a laughably bad film. There are time in which Billy Zane's performance not only breaks the forth wall it shatters it into a thousand pieces, leaving the viewer in a vortex of both confusion and pure hilarity. If it's not zombies, who's only zombie like aspect is alka-seltzer driven mouth foam, it's seemingly omniscience beef patties that attack the characters in-mass. The full affect of this leaves one with more per-zombie-giggles than "FIDO". If you happen to have a group of pro-zombie minded friends and what a movie to put everyone in stitches try "The Mad".

I'm not sure what the fate of The Mad is but lovers of zombie films should give it a go whenever and however it becomes available for public consumption. The Mad is a surprisingly funny and twisted addition to the zombie genre. I laughed really hard at a few moments in the film and I am usually immune to laughter. But the script is very funny.

Billy Zane is pitch perfect, as is the actress who plays his daughter, Maggie Castle. The rest of the cast is admirable but the real standouts are this father and daughter duo.

It took too long to get going and lost a bit of it's steam throughout the second half. And only because it could have used more zombie action and less meaningless effects segues have I rated it as such.

Family bickering during a zombie crisis was never this good.

THE MAD concerns a family vacation interrupted by a hamburger-induced zombie outbreak. Billy Zane is the dad who must face the hideous horde, with the help of his daughter, her boyfriend, and a handful of other survivors.

The first half of the movie is very good. Zane and company are hilarious. Things bog down a bit during the middle part, but there are just enough funny bits to keep it rolling.

Besides, how often do you get a chance to witness a hamburger patty crawl around, bubble green goo, and fly onto someone's face?...

Billy zane and co get up to mischief in this 80-some minute long movie.

It definitely has its moments that warrant a good chuckle, and the writing had decent flow, but it rapidly overstays its welcome.

The cinematography is kinda all over the place, and the editing leaves much to desire, what with the whole early 2000s vignette, which was the style at the time.

There's not much else to critique it on, ultimately the movie is okay and will get a few giggles out of you, it doesn't do much new. If I had to pick a specific issue, it's that it runs for way too long and boils down to them repeating the same joke for the entire span of the movie, kinda like a bad SNL skit, but they don't look at the camera after doing something they think is funny.

You could do worse, maybe it'll be right up your alley, give it a shot if you want, but you'll not miss much by skipping over it.

Having screened The Mad at the Gala Opening at the 2007 Canadian Filmmakers Festival, I can say that it would be a shame for this movie to be relegated to the 'Direct to Video Pile'. It's likely to become a cult movie in a similar vein to "Shaun of the Dead", "Evil Dead", "Return of the Living Dead", etc.

A tad slow in places, the intelligent humour and earnestness of the characters more than makes up for any shortcomings. This movie makes no pretense to being anything other than fun.

Nice to see Billy Zane in something other than a dramatic role, with luck we'll see more comedic acting from Zane in the future as he seemed to have a great deal of fun with this role.

Go 'Team Chris'