How can you not resist seeing a movie with such a great title as Zombie Hamlet? The movie itself is not as good as the title and is different to what you'd expect the movie to be reading the title. Zombie Hamlet is a lot of fun to watch and has moments of smart direction, it wisely doesn't take itself too seriously and seems to mostly know what it's trying to be and do, mockumentary-style and playing for laughs essentially. There is a very clever main titles sequence, a memorable, haunting if loud music score, and there are some funny dialogue and situations, most effective in its focusing on the bad ideas of going into production. The acting is mostly better than average, June Lockhart stealing the show with a genuine sassiness and sense of comic timing. John Amos is wonderfully deadpan too and Jason Mewes thankfully restrains his foul-mouthed persona and is equally tongue-and-cheek. The exception is Shelley Long, who is too over-the-top even at face value. There is some forced and eye-rolling lines where you are actually wincing rather than laughing-out-loud, and some other situations are incredibly ludicrous in sections where Zombie Hamlet does lose its knowing-what-it's-aiming-at quality. Zombie Hamlet doesn't look great, at times the shaky cam is effective but it is overused and distracting, giving the movie a cheap look. The sets and lighting are okay if rather simplistic, the first fifteen minutes after the main titles is very amateurishly shot that it almost puts you off watching the rest and the ending does suffer from zombie overkill and ridiculousness taken to extremes. All in all, has a lot of flaws but it did have its good moments, so while the personal rating is not very high I can't be too hard on it. Especially as it is miles ahead of a lot of movies taking on similar situations and humour, namely in spoofs and found footage movies. 5/10 Bethany Cox
