Be prepared… to be disappointed

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This article was published 31/10/2015 (3988 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The credits for Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse come at the end, not the beginning. In that, they provide a surprise ending, of sorts.

You can sit through the movie and say to yourself: Wow, here’s an example of how Hollywood screenwriters just don’t know how to write female characters.

Surprise! Three of the four credited screenwriters are, in fact, women. Artistically, that should cause more unease than the prospect of an undead epidemic.

Anyway, what we have is a standard zombie plague stemming from a generic research facility, released into the world by a goofy janitor (Workaholics’ Blake Anderson) and affecting both humans and animals in a generic American town.

Three high school kids constitute the town’s Boy Scout troop under the guidance of the gung-ho Scout Leader Rogers (David Koechner). But for pals Ben (Tye Sheridan) and Carter (Logan Miller), the enthusiasm is waning.

The scout uniforms set them apart as geeks in high school, and the horndog Carter is especially ready to abandon the campfire for the warm companionship of young women.

Ben is reluctant, owing to his friendship with the fragile, fatherless Augie (Joey Morgan), but agrees to duck out of a camp night to go to an elaborate “secret party” held by the cool kids.

On the way, the two notice their town is strangely quiet. They take the opportunity to gain entrance to a deserted strip club. A stripper starts to perform for Ben, but she proves to be one of the walking, bumping, grinding dead (which should tell you something about this movie’s priorities when it comes to zombie behaviour).

The lads are rescued by Denise (Sarah Dumont), an Amazonian cocktail waitress who proves to be pretty good with a shotgun.

Denise might be considered a good, empowered female character if she were recognizably human.

She is not. She’s a deus ex machina in cutoffs and a tank top.

The guys reunite with Augie, who had troubles of his own fighting off the now zombie-fied Scout Leader Rogers. Ben resolves to save the life of Carter’s sister, his secret crush (Halston Sage), oh, and any of the other kids at the aforementioned secret party.

To do that, the guys will need to employ all their Scout skills, and improvise a few new ones, such as how to rappel down the side of a house employing a zombie penis.

That’s actually a very funny scene, as is the one where Cloris Leachman’s mean old lady — equally malevolent whether dead or alive — tries to bite Carter without benefit of her dentures.

But the teen sex-comedy isn’t really a good fit with the zombie thriller because, unlike vampires, zombies aren’t sexy. Amusing precedents such as Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland notwithstanding, the zombie movie is a delivery system for existential despair, not boy-meets-girl giggles.

What made those two aforementioned movies work was well-written characters, including the female ones. Like the oversexed Carter, director Christopher Landon (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones) can’t keep his eyes off the boobs.

Even zombie boobs. Yeesh.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca