Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)

Review

"All right, scouts. Let's kick some zombie ass!" - Ben

Ben, Carter, and Augie are scouts and hence probably aren't on everyone's top list of high school folk to hang with. Worse for Augie, Ben and Carter are seriously thinking about giving it away now, and on a night when Augie is to receive the highest scout badge possible. On the bright side Ben and Carter get invited to a party, and decide not to take Augie. Unfortunately a janitor unleashes a zombie epidemic that quickly spreads through the local township and threatens to engulf the rest of the U.S, no we aren't talking teens on mobile phones here.

Ben and Carter arrive in town to find the place deserted, except for a zombie horde and hooked up with cocktail waitress Denise Russo to put some serious hurt on the undead. Along with Augie it's soon Scouts versus Zombies as the dudes attempt to rescue the teenage party goers, get out of Dodge, and Ben tries to get the girl. Was there a beaver joke in there somewhere? Some serious Scout humour ensues that wasn't exactly rocking it for me.

Seems there are a couple of sub genres that are simply not going to go away, namely Found Footage and Zom-Coms! While a zillion and one Reviewers smugly declare Found Footage is at an end with each new release, and are then routinely shown to be complete twats as the trend continues to pick up steam, (two Found Footage flicks charted heavily last year), Zom-Com is being left alone to moulder away in its own juices. If anything I'm quite happy to catch up with some Found Footage on a yearly basis, but am getting well over the inane Zom-Coms that continue to spill out of the Boredwood movie factories, can someone shoot this trend in the head stat! Case in point this movie which labours under the misapprehension that it is somehow hilarious Rex. Sorry to disappoint here but for two thirds of the flick I was bored, my dog was bored, the whole neighbourhood was bored. I did get the occasion laugh in the final act, but not enough to justify the time spent getting there. But hey it did feature zombie boobs, which would have been cool if it hadn't been done to death, no pun intended, a zillion times previously. Okay let's stir the gruel here and get this one out of the way.

There is nothing wrong with the basic plot of the movie, zombie plague unwittingly released by bumbling janitor, town engulfed, come the time come the dudes as our Scouts rise to the occasion. It even ties in pretty neatly with Scouts being prepared and everything, but, and this is a big but, the feeling I got was the whole notion had been done to the preverbal previously in any number of those Return of the Living Dead flicks. There just wasn't anything new here, beyond a sort of mixing in of coming of age concepts with the lighter side of the death mask. The whole movie could have pretty much boiled down to an episode of Supernatural without anyone missing out on anything to be honest. They did manage to drag the concept out to movie length, which I guess is some sort of achievement, but it's getting pretty thread bare by this stage with nothing new to be added to the pot.

There's any number of winks to other core horror outings, a signpost pointing to Haddonfield for example, but to be honest I was checking my email as the movie lumbered along to its preordained Return of The Living Dead conclusion. So hey if after a drinking game for Friday night, then lob Scouts Guide on and take a shot for every horror reference you pick up on. And that friends and neighbours is making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Acting was on par with about every other B grade horror flick you have ever seen; the cast doing their best with poorly written caricatures for the most part. And I guess the directing from Christopher Landon was up to the task, if that task was a Sunday night telemovie. Other than that we are pretty much just talking stay up late Monday night television fare.

Without heading into too much detail, cause that detail would be pretty sparse at best, the horror elements are submerged under a blanket of jokes, standard dialogue, and the sort of zombie stuff we regularly see in the run of the mill Zom-com. So if thinking of dialling in for some gore or chills you will be sadly disappointed with the world. Equally T&A resolves to zombie boobs, not exactly calling for the need of tissues, and that's about all she wrote in crayon.

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse isn't reaching any great new heights, or any low heights for that matter, but doesn't overly overstay its welcome. Don't expect anything new or creative and you'll be pretty right with your viewing. The movie will work for a younger audience rather than older audiences, and is probably going to really work for the tween male. Vague recommendation therefore for younger readers, older folk should check out what else is available on the rental store shelves.