Cinemark Theaters and The Asylum have joined forces to present THURSDAY NIGHTS AT THE ASYLUM in theaters across the country, bringing underground and indie horror, thriller, sci-fi, and cult cinema to the masses. If you’re like me, you probably didn’t know this was happening. But that’s why we’re here; to spread the gospel.
I love low-budget horror films. There’s a purity to the best of them that you can’t quite get from a big-budget film. Sure you can get better actors and better effects and, hypothetically, better scripts, but in reality, mo’ money, mo’ problems is a fact of life. When you make a low-budget film, you can have more control over the project and really make it your own. Sure, throwing in some tits or gore is sometimes necessary to get distribution, but good indie filmmakers make that shit work. Turn the tits to your advantage. Get disgusting with your gore. Put your stamp on it and be proud. Schlock and exploitation isn’t something to be ashamed of. The greatest filmmakers of our time started out making trashy movies.
Hell, some never gave up on making schlock and became great at that.
Zombie movies are like a gateway drug to filmmaking. They’re pretty easy to put together. The story can be lean so long as the actors are committed and you have some entertaining gore. And if you know you can’t make a serious zombie film, then lean heavily into the comedy. Make the cheap effects a strength. Make weak performers part of the joke. It’s not difficult to make a decent zombie movie if you have the dedication. And even if you can’t get the zombies right, you can always throw some titties in there and your audience will generally be pleased.
Or at least pacified.
This week’s film, Zombie Spring Breakers (or Ibiza Undead, depending on what promotional materials you can get your hands on), gets none of these things right. Not a single one. Written and Directed by Andy Edwards, Zombie Spring Breakers is a British film that opts to avoid everything that makes a halfway decent zombie movie, while simultaneously avoiding everything that makes a halfway decent Spring Break movie.
It’s almost fascinating how Edwards makes the worst possible storytelling decision at every single point in the film. The opening credits sequence is made up of news broadcast voiceovers blaming the zombie plague on immigrants, in what is the only interesting aspect of the film, to be honest. For a minute I thought we might actually have a political subtext to go along with potential splatter and boobs.
Instead, we get pretty much none of any of it.
The rest of the film follows three friends, cut-rate In-Betweeners, really, The Boring One, The Nerdy One, and The Fat Obnoxious One, as they travel to Ibiza, Spain for a lad’s holiday. Along for the ride is the Boring One’s Ex-Girlfriend for, you know, reasons, and they’ll be staying at the same beach house with the Boring One’s Sister and her hot Bitchy Friend.
A local club is run by Gay British Guy and he keeps zombies chained up as part of the live entertainment, which also includes zombie dismemberment – which was interesting solely for the way the crowd, including our heroes, really got into it. For just a second there, something truly disturbing was revealed about these people, but then it passed and the zombies break free.
Nothing else in the film is played straight. This is attempting to be a straight-up comedy with zombies thrown in for some reason. But it’s not funny at all. Again, every creative decision is the worst possible one. Giving The Fat Obnoxious One the spotlight for the majority of the film is brutally painful. It seems like there was a lot of improv going on and none of it is good. When The In-Betweeners focuses on vulgarity, it’s often tempered with the fact that we know that Jay is a loser with issues. He’s pathetic but sincere. It’s earned.
The Fat Obnoxious One is simply vulgar in sad attempts to pass for humor literally from his first second on-screen.
And I don’t even know what the point of The Boring One and The Boring One’s Ex is other than simply to give us a generic “romance” that isn’t even that. The Boring One’s Sister and Bitchy Friend don’t add anything to the film (other than a brief topless scene by Bitchy Friend and an extremely short lesbian make-out scene – no seriously, so short it’s not interesting at all) and The Nerdy One gets a slight narrative arc as he avoids being sexually assaulted by The Gay British Guy, teams up with the Brazilian Chick, and ultimately save the day – for the most part.
I hate saying this, but there is nothing of interest here. There are a handful of girls in bikinis, a few zombies with decent facial makeup but no real gore beyond that (an attempt or two are so weak and bloodless that I wondered what the point was), a never-ending stream of perverted comments passing for jokes, generic script, plot, and cinematography, and no real purpose for any of it to happen other than to give the cast and crew a trip to Spain and maybe some sort of tax break(?).
Zombie Spring Breakers is the least creative, most pointless zombie comedy I have ever seen. There’s no way you should spend money on this.
But if you don’t trust me, Zombie Spring Breakers is playing exclusively Thursday night, November 2 for one night only at the following Cinemark Theaters:
Movies 16 + XD (Lubbock, TX)
Hollywood 17 (Mcallen, TX)
College Station + XD (College Station, TX)
Tinseltown 17 (Erie, PA)
Cinemark Movies 16 + XD (Somerdale, NJ)
Movies 14 (Mishawaka, IN)
Cinemark Tinseltown 17 + XD (Grapevine, TX)
Tinseltown 20 + XD (El Paso, TX)
Tinseltown 20 + XD (Pflugerville, TX)
Cinemark Tinseltown + XD (Louisville, KY)
Tinseltown 14 (Oak Ridge, TN)
Tinseltown 14 (Pueblo, CO)
Legacy 24 + XD (Plano, TX)
Cinemark Tinseltown 20 + XD (Oklahoma City, OK)
Cinemark Tinseltown 20 + XD (Merriam, KS)
Tinseltown 20 + XD (Jacksonville, FL)
Tinseltown 17 (Fayetteville, GA)
Cinemark 17 + IMAX (Tulsa, OK)
Cinemark 19 + XD (Katy, TX)
Tinseltown 14 (Bristol, VA)
Moosic 20 + XD (Moosic, PA)
Valley View 24 + XD (Valley View, OH)
Cinemark Orlando + XD (Orlando, FL)
Cinemark 24 + XD (West Jordan, UT)
Cinemark 18 + XD (Webster, TX)
Carefree Circle 16 + IMAX (Colorado Springs, CO)
Cinemark 16 (Fort Collins, CO)
Cinemark 15 + XD (Hadley, MA)
Cinemark 14 @ The Pike + XD (Long Beach, CA)
Cinemark 14 + XD (Lake Charles, LA)
Pittsburgh Mills Mall 18 + IMAX (Tarentum, PA)
Cinemark 16 (Mesa, AZ)
Cinemark Perkins Rowe + XD (Baton Rouge, LA)
Cinemark Fayette Mall 16 + XD (Lexington, KY)
Mountain View Cinema 16 (Mountain View, CA)
Albuquerque Rio 24 + XD (Albuquerque, NM)
Orange Stadium Promenade 25 + XD (Orange, CA)
Century Parklane (Reno, NV)
Portland Eastport Plaza (Portland, OR)
Anchorage 16 + XD (Anchorage, AK)
Century El Con + XD (Tucson, AZ)
Evanston 18 + XD (Evanston, IL)
Las Vegas Samstown 18 (Las Vegas, NV)
Century Walnut Creek 14 + XD (Walnut Creek, CA)
Sacramento Greenback 16 + XD (Sacramento, CA)
San Jose Oakridge 20 + XD (San Jose, CA)
Century 16 Bel Mar + XD (Lakewood, CO)
Des Moines Jordan Creek + XD (West Des Moines, IA)
Huntington Beach Bella Terra 20 + XD (Huntington Beach, CA)
Las Vegas Santa Fe Station 16 + XD (Las Vegas, NV)
Sandy Union Heights 16 (Sandy, UT)
Century 16 (Boulder, CO)
Century Federal Way + XD (Federal Way, WA)
Century River Park 16 + XD (10/26) (Oxnard, CA)
Cinemark Robinson Township + XD (Robinson Township, PA)
Cinemark 14 (5/8) (Joliet, IL)
Cinemark 12 (6/24) (Barboursville, WV)
Paradise 24 + XD (Davie, FL)
Egyptian 24 + XD (Hanover, MD)
Cinemark Farmington + XD (Farmington, UT)
Christiana + XD (Newark, DE)
Cinemark Oakley Station + XD (Cincinnati, OH)
Cinemark North Hills + XD (Pittsburgh, PA)
Colonel Glenn 18 + XD (Little Rock, AR)
Cinemark 18 and XD (Los Angeles, CA)
Buckland Hills 18 IMAX (Manchester, CT)
Preston Crossings 16 (Louisville, KY)
Flint West 14 (Flint, MI)
Ann Arbor 20 IMAX (Ypsilanti, MI)
Hazlet 12 (Hazlet, NJ)
Dayton South 16 + XD (West Carrollton, OH)
Milford 16 (Milford, OH)
Fallen Timbers 14 + XD (Maumee, OH)
Franklin Park 16 + XD (Toledo, OH)
Northeast Mall 18 + XD (Hurst, TX)
Cuyahoga Falls + XD (Cuyahoga Falls, OH)