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    American Zombie (coming soon to Studio 35)

    AMERICAN ZOMBIE

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    PLAYING AT BEAUTIFUL STUDIO 35

    Wednesday, April 30th @ 10:30pm


    Grace Lee is an up-and-coming name in the world of independent documentary films. Her 2002 film Barrier Device won several regional awards, and made her one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “Top 25 To Watch.” Her followup film, a documentary titled Best of the Wurst, was a quirky little number focused on the delicious German currywurst and its symbiotic relationship with its home. 2005 brought The Grace Lee project, where she turned the camera on herself (in a manner of speaking), exploring a handful of the thousands of people who share her name.

    I mean, I guess. I culled all that off the web just now. I honestly had no idea who Grace Lee was before being asked to review American Zombie. I don’t have a lot of time to watch movies about condoms, I’m not convinced that a filmmaker’s name is a strong enough topic for a full-length documentary (although it made an alright throwaway observation in American Splendor), and my preference would be to eat currywurst rather than watch a quirky documentary on it.

    Still, I love zombies, and I like talking nice about Studio 35. So I sat down to watch this movie last night from a screener DVD. Then I wrote this review. Then I deleted about half of this review. Here is my review.

    Media clipping services working for Grace Lee should probably stop reading now. Thanks.

    American Zombie: “It’s Okay, But Not Great.”

    With American Zombie, Grace Lee is looking to move back into fiction, a format she has eschewed since her MFA short-film days.

    American Zombie is a movie about making a movie, starring Grace Lee as herself. This should result in a nice bit of cognitive dissonance for the viewer, as a documentary usually has at its core a wholehearted earnestness to expose the truth, rather than a “hidden agenda” of moving from plot point to plot point. Additionally, because the movie is about making a movie, the film appears to be all the more concerned about giving the audience the whole story, making the lie that much stronger.

    Unfortunately, the fake meta-documentary has already been tackled, and by one of the world’s most infamous filmmakers to boot (i.e. Werner Herzog and Zak Penn’s Incident at Loch Ness).

    Doubly unfortunately, Incident at Loch Ness and American Zombie share quite a few plot points–from the mythical/supernatural subject of the documentary, to the friction of two directors working on the same documentary, and even in the eventual “turn” when the filmmakers’ lives come into danger. So where American Zombie could have been groundbreaking and fresh, or judged on its own merits, it instead falls into a genre where it is immediately dominated by stronger entries.

    Grace Lee is an MFA, guys. I am sure she’s seen Incident at Loch Ness. She’s also probably seen (or at least heard of) Ghostwatch, The Blair Witch Project, and Behind The Mask. If she is trying to help turn the “fake meta-documentary about monsters” into its own genre, then that’s one thing. But to be quite honest, I was a little disappointed that it followed the template so closely.

    CINEMATOGRAPHY

    It’s a little hard for me to accurately judge the cinematography of the film. The screener DVD I was provided with had compressed the widescreen movie to a 4:3 aspect ratio, effectively squishing the image and making everything look tall. I would blame this on my failure to set my DVD player correctly, but the text at the bottom of the screen reading “FOR SCREENING PURPOSES ONLY” seemed to be at the right ratio.

    Which reminds me: Attention directors and producers! If your movie has a scene with subtitles, DO NOT LET your distribution company overwrite the subtitles with a notice that I am watching a screener! It won’t stop me from putting the movie on PirateBay, and it makes me think that the old Chinese man only likes to use zombies for screening purposes. I will make a joke about it, and then be frustrated for the next two minutes as I miss out on whatever he’s saying.

    Incidentally, that is why there aren’t any screenshots in this review. I tried, it looked dumb. This is a little dry though, so I’ll try adding in a picture I made for my last movie review.

    “By the time the movie gets interesting, you will have already figured out the plot twist.” -Me, in about 10 paragraphs

    Much better. Want to know what a zombie wearing a hat looks like? Go watch the movie!

    With that caveat, everything seemed quite visually solid. Like I said, Lee has proven herself to be an adept director in previous movies, and I don’t know why that would change with the introduction of storyboards. Because the story’s premise allows for a professional camera and sound crew (although the fictional crew is much smaller, of course, than the actual crew who worked on the film), even the shots on cheap hand-held cameras look good.

    The “documentary” setting necessarily limits the director and cinematographer, preventing the use of any crane shots or slice-of-life rotating cameras—the Tony Hawk “900” of the movie world.

    There are a few memorable, striking shots–I’d say about three per act–which tend to come at the most interesting or emotional plot points. Every other scene is beautiful enough to give a smooth viewing experience, without overdoing the fact that the shots have been deliberately planned. If you’re looking to film a false documentary, you could certainly do a lot worse than emulating this movie shot-for-shot.

    I should close out this section before I use the phrase “Errol Morrisian.” Whoops! Too late.

    SOUND

    As could be expected of a documentary, there was very little dubbed-in music used so as not to detract from the moment. However, the three major pieces used were all pretty excellent. I can’t say too much in this area without giving away a plot point or two, but there is not a whole lot to criticize here. The music was well-chosen, tightly edited, and served to heighten the scenes it was in.

    My movie-watching companion was ready to stab the rock version of “We’re Zombies (and we want equal rights)” that played during the credits, but then again she was already feeling kind of stabby at the time.

    STORY

    The storyline is where I found the movie to be the most disappointing. As I hope I’ve made abundantly clear, Grace Lee sure seems to know how to work the technical aspects of a film. What she’s missing in this movie–and based on the reviews, what she’s also missing in her previous documentaries–is either a good writer, or a producer who’s willing to crack the whip and force her to tighten things up.

    Before starting the movie, I watched the trailer, and I figured there were two ways that they could run with the premise. It could either be a straight-faced fake documentary, or it could have a twist and turn into a different genre (horror, comedy, romance, whatever).

    American Zombie plays the first few scenes absolutely straight. Not coincidentally, these are also the most boring scenes in the movie.

    By the time the movie gets interesting, you will have already figured out the plot twist.

    But honestly, that doesn’t matter so much in this day and age. By now, America’s movie-watching brain-sphincter has been stretched by M. Night Shyamalan to such an extent that you could drive a truck full of Twilight Zone episodes through it.

    So having a good grip on what the twist was going to be, I kept watching because I wanted answers to a couple of questions that caught me by surprise. Minor things that were interesting ideas, rather than huge whiz-bang “the movie has been playing in reverse!” reveals.

    Imagine my dissatisfaction when the movie rolled right past the answers to my questions without so much as a sideways glance. “Oh, did you want to know what the drug is? It’s some drug they use to get high. Want to know why they love voids? Oh, it’s because they’re zombies. What was in that cabinet in Ivan’s apartment? Who knows. Who cares?”

    And then, infuriatingly, the final shots raised even more questions. Not good questions, just unanswered ones. Questions that would, in real life, become the subject of the documentary rather than an afterthought. The film falls into the infamous false-document trap of “how did they get their hands on that footage? What legal team would allow this to be shown?” and then drops the audience right into the credits.

    Yes, sure, documentaries tend to leave unanswered questions at the end because they’re impartial and life has no end and BLAH BLAH BLAH. But this is not a documentary, and the near-disdain for the things I found interesting says to me that neither Ms. Lee nor her five producers knew what was going to make this movie interesting before they began.

    I’d like to name-check another horror movie at this point: Session 9. Like Session 9, American Zombie has all the ingredients for a good movie. But like Session 9, American Zombie misses the entire point of its own existence. Session 9 drowned in its visuals, leaving its “big reveal” to fall flat compared to the impossible atmosphere of Danvers State Hospital. American Zombie drowns in scenes that are too long, talking to characters who don’t become interesting, setting up conspiracies that never fruit. Eventually its “big reveal” also falls flat in the face of what could have been.

    Honestly, I have to boil down the review to this: If you like zombie movies, or zombie books, or zombies in general, you would enjoy seeing this at least once.

    Although I want to punch George Romero in the face for introducing the idea of the “intelligent zombie” to cinema, this movie deals with the subject in a way that’s still fresh and interesting, and brings some cool ideas to the table to boot.

    It’s interesting in the same way that The Zombie Survival Guide is interesting. Sadly, it’s lacking in exactly the way that World War Z is not.

    If you don’t enjoy zombies, you can probably afford to skip it.

    American Zombie isn’t a movie I’ll give much thought to in the future. I don’t really have a desire to see it again, and I wouldn’t go out of my way to share it with friends. But it had its good moments, it was well made, and it was enjoyable. It’s certainly a good enough excuse to patronize Studio 35 if you don’t have anything better to do.

    Remember: Any movie is a good movie if you drink enough beer first!

    And hey, I hear it’s playing back-to-back with Animation Show #4, which is something you definitely don’t want to miss. I couldn’t get a screener for it, because there aren’t any screeners for it, because it’s still being edited… Columbus is a test market for what to take out. After it plays at Studio 35, it will never be the same movie again.

    Why, maybe Mike Judge will be there. Maybe you’ll show him your Daria fanfiction and he’ll say “I wasn’t actually involved with that show, but I like the cut of your jib” and then he’ll fly you back to Austin in his private plane and you’ll get to hang out and be best friends forever and meet The Munsters or whoever.

    Or maybe he’ll stay in Austin and watch it at the Alamo Drafthouse. What the hell do I know? I’ve got another ten minutes before I have to post this and I am going to use every one of them writing instead of editing, dammit.

    Remember: Any postscript to a review is funny if you drink enough beer first!

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    Jim Lauwers
    Jim Lauwers
    Jim's illustrious career in sleeping through deadlines has included such honors as 'academic probation,' 'an angry text message from an ex-girlfriend,' and 'an unfinished 45-page report on the kulturkreis of midwestern anime conventions as reported by a self-hating drunk.'
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