Everyone loves zombies. Your friend loves zombies, your little brother loves zombies and even your ‘too cool to be hip’ grandmother loves those brain munching rascallians. It's gotten to the point that they're lumbering pop-culture jokes. It doesn't help that every first time director wants to create a masterpiece with the 'Z' word right out the gate. The recipe seems so easy: Splatter everything in the red stuff, make people scream and flail their arms and add lots of smash zooms. Instant Cult Classic!? More like a hopelessly contrived mess (Like my writing!) that is trying so hard that it reminds you of that annoying kid who thought that being loud = being funny.
(Hey! I was that kid!)
I wouldn’t have given Dance of the Dead a second though if it weren’t for the Director Gregg Bishop. A few years back he was the mastermind behind the ultra- low budget (It only cost fifteen thousand!) action spectacular ‘The Other Side’ Now armed with a slightly higher cash-roll, he easily dodges the contagious bite of the sophomore slump. While ‘Dance of the Dead’ doesn’t do anything new, just remember the universal rule of storytelling: It's not about what you create out of thin air (The zombie can fly! And shoot fire from their fingertips! And juggle!). It's the journey that matters. 'Dance of the Dead' is all about the building blocks. The story follows a high-school characters that get attacked by an army of flesh eaters on the night of their prom. We’ve got the universal every-teen (Jared Kusnitz), his best friend who’s in love with the unreachable cheerleader, the uni-teen’s flighty sorta girlfriend, a gang of nerds, the tough kid, crazy gym teacher and a few other disposable archetypes that are going to be ripped apart along the way. The story takes about twenty minutes to set up before jumping into high gear with a fantastic ‘Zombies jumping out of their graves as if shot out of a cannon’ sequence that is jaw-dropping in scope. The nuclear-powered zombies in this world are a little ill defined so you’ll have to leave your common sense at the door. They can drive cars, move super fast (Thanks to the magic of frame cutting), and are hypnotized by Metal Music. Purists may balk, but it’s their loss, because we I haven’t seen something as consistently enjoyable as DoD in a blue moon.
The acting ranges from passable to believable (All teens were actually teens. Now that’s innovative) and it was a smart choice to skim lightly on the serious side of things ("He got bit. Isn't he going to change in a zombie any second now?") and stick closely to the ‘It’s a Freaking Fun Zombie Film!” motto. It gets top marks in the 'Audience Pleasing Cult Classic 101' category.
The gore in Dead is strictly of the splatstick variety and is consistently gleeful in squishing heads and ripping spines. Only the ending disappoints in its inability to deliver the balls to the wall climax the inner gore hound craved. The characters are like able, the situations wild and the directorial flourishes innovative without being to distracting. Gregg Bishop is obviously a film fan and I can only imagine the wonders he could paint if he was more expensive paintbrushes and a completely original premise.
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