The headline says it all, so let’s get right to my completely biased opinion about this pair of recent zombie films.
DEAD SHACK (2017)
Dead Shack is my kind of zombedy. The plot is simple, there are minimal characters, it’s a “cabin in the woods” scenario, and once the action starts, we get plenty of ooey gooey guts as zombies are massacred, along with plenty of quick and quirky comic lines by the leads.
And most importantly, our main family that heads into the woods is just wacky. The fun-loving daddy bear and his aloof girlfriend are big on drinking and smoking pot.
The daughter is like a young, tough-mouthed Scout Taylor-Compton. Her younger brother is a wise ass who grows on you and gets funnier as the movie progresses, and his best buddy is an awkward pretty boy who sounds like a young Christian Slater.
The problem starts when the three kids make a bunch of stupid decisions. Yet it’s hard to fault them because they are kids, and kids probably would do this kind of dumb shit.
They go exploring, find a house in the woods, where a figure in a welder’s mask and an impenetrable suit feeds people to a zombie on a leash.
This is actually the film’s major flaw. We are SHOWN who is beneath the mask from the very beginning, so when the rest of the movie becomes about the welder with zombies on leashes trying to hunt them down, it spoils what could be a great creep factor to go with all the comedy.
The gore, the gnarly zombies, the comedy, the dad, and eventually the son totally rock, making this an instant buy for my collection.
CARGO (2017)
A popular 7-minute zombie film is extended into an agonizing 105-minute film with barely a zombie in sight.
Seriously, it’s time we put character driven zombie films (and The Walking Dead) to rest and go back to the days when zombies growling “Brains!” were the main characters, and ate that shit before the humans had a chance to have deep thoughts or express emotions.
A whole lot of nothing happens as we meet a man, his, wife, and their baby, floating along on a barge during the zombie apocalypse.
Eventually the dad gets bitten, and while everyone else turns quickly, he just has attacks occasionally and makes it through the entire 105 minutes as he attempts to get his baby to safety.
Yes, this guy who turns on a dime thinks the solution is to bring his baby to safety…by carrying it on his zombie-assed back.
The movie becomes a series of encounters with other human beings, and despite the snarling monsters that occasionally attack, the ONLY time his baby ever cries in terror (or at all for that matter) is when he’s trying to hide from a human.
I don’t know how I even managed to get that far into the film. I should have stopped when the idiot steered his car spastically to avoid hitting a fucking zombie, leading to a fatal human death.
“Brains! But not yours…you’re a dumb ass!”
My advice? Ignore all the reviews that tell you to ignore all the reviews that trash this film…
