Freaks of Nature

Comedy version of zombie apocalypse has been done a few times in last year alone, but "Freaks of Nature" has a brilliant idea, throws in vampires and aliens too for good measure. It results in a mishmash of erratic dysfunctional team, in some cases there's literally no sense of what's going on as it occurs too randomly. While the loud noise can be, and quite will be numbing, it does sneak in a few over-the-top comedic moments.

In a town where all monstrosities, and humanity, work in less than harmony, an alien invasion will change all that. This is the same type of nerds or outcasts save the day premise since Elijah Wood rescued the hot girl and defeated the foreign threat in The Faculty, only done in much more bloody chaotic fashion.

Dag (Nicholas Braun) is channeling his child Shia LaBeouf as he stutters, gestures and blurs out his lines in unexpected hero gig, though at this point it's too obvious of a hero set-up it becomes cliché. Petra (Mackenzie Davis) is looking highly uncomfortable with her fake fang and unapproachable issues. These two barely have any chemistry yet the screenplay just clashes them together for romantic subplot.

Lorelei (Vanessa Hudgens) looks like the mandatory wallflower and constantly gives uncomfortable erotic gaze to pretty much everything. Ned (Josh Fadem) is the zombiefied nerd, who actually has more relatable problems although the lumbering shtick feels restraining. Keegan-Michael Key from the Youtube or Comedy Central fame delivers his desperate teacher persona, which is expectedly and exaggeratedly entertaining.

The whole thing reeks of chaos, even though it tries to associate real life social metaphor of acceptance for the undertone of monster theme. It has a few witty moments in expense of the main characters and these are appreciated albeit blatant in delivery. Its abrupt change can be distracting since it tries to pile so many fleshy gore together, then suddenly includes display of nudity.

"Freak of Nature" is the example of outlandishly bloody parody, it's as juvenile as they come but might work momentarily for a mindless fun escapade.

Mixing zombies, vampires, and aliens sounded cool enough. With Patton Oswalt, Bob Odenkirk, Denis Leary, Keegan-Michael Key, and Werner Herzog, one would think this could be a really funny movie. Instead, those really funny people all play relatively small roles and we are mostly left with a trio of unfunny heroes plodding around the film.

The town has zombies and vampires mixing in society, mostly at a high school, and none of that ever gets a back story. Attempts at wild comedy don't need to explain too much, especially if it would interfere with the jokes. But this wild comedy never gets wild enough, and it is nowhere near as clever as it portrays itself. Is it really all that funny to kill people around you and then act like it was NBD?

There are funny moments, but not enough LOLz. There also seems to be some attempt at a morality play about classism or racism, as we see humans vs. zombies vs. vampires. Vampire-on-zombie crime is most assuredly despicable, and we should all get along.

This vague social commentary gets mixed with the eternal story font: High School is Tough For Everyone, Even the Popular People. If you don't want to feel, you don't have to: just go be a zombie. If you want to be cool, be a vampire. Whatever you do, just make sure everyone sees, so you can make the scene.

It's a bad sign when Ed Westwick has the best performance in a movie. Nicholaus Braun rattles off his lines like he can't wait to get to the bar. Mackenzie Davis, however, puts in a sincere performance and is a star-to-be.

Freaks of Nature is neither clever enough, funny enough, gross enough, nor serious enough to be much of anything in particular. Even the smooth and dulcet tones of Werner Herzog's voice do little to step up the scene. This is no Cabin in the Woods.

The first 7 minutes or so when I watched it, it felt like a poor spoof film (of Twilight and a bunch of other flicks) so I really wasn't getting into it at all as I really am not a fan of spoof flicks (at least the ones they do these days).

But I decided to give it another go and although a lot of jokes (of which in some scenes every line of dialogue is one) fall flat (the ratio of funny jokes for me would probably be about 1 out of 10) once the action kicks off it still gets rather amusing.

It helps that it moves at a fast pace so you can't focus too much on the flaws.

Teenagers cracking jokes and battling various monsters seem to been a very popular subject in film in 2015 and if you loved DEATHGASM (2015), THE FINAL GIRLS (2015) and SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE APOCALYPSE (2015) I'm sure you will at the very least like this one as they are pretty similar.

"Freaks of Nature" had it all, literally, it had it all. Zombies, vampires, werewolves and aliens. The only thing that was missing was robots. Now, one might think with a mix of that many iconic movie creatures thrown together, that it might be a bit too much. But it wasn't! And "Freaks of Nature" turned out to be a very entertaining movie.

The movie starts out in a fast pace, and the audience is introduced to a world where vampires and zombies live among the living humans. Then on one fateful night, aliens show up and that upsets the balance of the world, causing the vampires, zombies and humans to turn against one another in a chaotic surge of violence.

The characters in the movie were nicely detailed, lots of characteristics and personalities. Plus the people hired to portray the various characters were doing great jobs with their given roles. It was a nice touch to see Denis Leary, Keegan-Michael Key and Bob Odenkirk in the movie as well. The three lead talents, Nicholas Braun (playing Dag), Mackenzie Davis (playing Petra) and Josh Fadem (playing Ned) really carried the movie quite well.

The story is good, filled with action and humor, and the effects are great as well. And having good special effects in a creature feature is a make or break deal, and I am glad to say that the special effects team really pulled their weight here and came through where it counted.

The whole mixture of aliens, humans, vampires and zombies in one movie was really good. It was surreal, for sure, but it was highly entertaining.

There has been a good addition of zombie comedies to the zombie genre in the recent years, and "Freaks of Nature" does rank high on the list, right alongside with "Shaun of the Dead", "Zombies of Mass Destruction" and "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse".

Good Horror/Comedies are hard to come by, so many of them just tend to be super cheesy low budget movies with no real laughs or originality. "Freaks Of Nature" isn't groundbreaking or some kind of cult masterpiece, but it is a lot of fun and full of monster action & Blood.

The film has sort of a teen flick atmosphere but it isn't too heavy and it isn't as corny as most flick's with that atmosphere tend to be. Any cheese here is completely intentional and the whole "Being a teen is super hard" thing isn't really played up too much. All three main characters are likable enough and are fun to root for. The film is riddled with some really fun cameos that help to speed things up a bit when things start to slow down a bit (which doesn't happen very often).

I had a good time watching this film, it was fast pace, funny, gory, and original enough to make it not seem like just another horror/comedy. From the trailer you should know what to expect, and as long as you know what to expect you should enjoy this film.

7/10