It is barely two months into 2018 and already I have seen the absolute worst movie of the entire year. None of the junk coming straight out of Hollywood can match up with the putrid horror-comedy indie MY UNCLE IS A ZOMBIE! It's a mountain of shit created by a bunch of pathetic z-grade artists, all of whom refused to stop drinking the kool-aid and speak up against their writer/co-director/star/"living legend". John A. Russo has been banking on his cred as co-screenwriter of the 1968 horror classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for his entire career, despite the sheer fact that (arguably) George Romero was the real vision of the project both in writing and directing. He also tries to proclaim how he helped shape one of the grandfathers of the zombie comedy sub-genre with THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, despite heavy evidence that he only shares credit on the story with two of his buddies and that famed screenwriter Dan O'Bannon was the auteur of the movie. His other films best explain who he really is: a hack filmmaker that enjoys sexy ladies and keeping his friends well paid rather than artistic integrity and making a well-shot, well-constructed, structurally sound movie. MY UNCLE JOHN IS A ZOMBIE! is no exception.
I should be explaining what the plot of the film is but quite frankly that's a tall order. Here's the short version: an elderly zombie named only Uncle John (John A. Russo), who can speak and really wants to fuck every pretty girl in sight, somehow becomes a celebrity and some rednecks want to kill him. Now let's break down the story some more so I can lay out how logic and common sense have no place in Russo's world of madness. The film takes place in the same world of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD but then others say that it was just a movie, which is proved later on by the presence of its film poster. The zombie apocalypse is still going on but every normal human being still has electricity, can access their cell phones, drive their cars freely and/or produce a live television show. Some zombies are still brain dead minions shuffling around but then there's others that are like Uncle John and can return to somewhat normalcy and are now seeking fame in Hollywood as zombie extras. That little addition leads to the biggest plot hole of the film in that there's nothing that makes Uncle John special if other undead people can do the same. Instead of roaming the wilderness for free as a zombie-killing posse, the evil rednecks pay some fat mumbly Italian guy $2,000 for every zombie they shoot in the head at his so-called camp. But the biggest WTF moment out of this supreme clusterfuck is when George Kosana randomly pops up as Sheriff McClelland, the very same character he played in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Footage from the 1968 film is shown, the same film that is not considered to be real by some characters in this film, and is used against him by a journalist. He's now suddenly labeled as a racist for killing and burning only black zombies, including Duane Jones' famed character Ben who is now named a hero despite the unequivocal fact that no one can declare that he was one because everyone died in that film! This massive migraine becomes further exasperated because any viewer of the Romero film knows that Sheriff McClelland wasn't the one who fired at Ben!
I could go on and on and spill my guts out just to elaborate on all of bad ideas that litter the script. From the random and pointless characters who suddenly get killed off to the severe lack of understanding how satire works (how can the fake Fox News channel be pro-zombie?), much can be discussed about the toilet paper scribblings that Russo thought of. But let's move to the true blue example of how awful this film is by looking at its visual competent. Russo has always been a hack but this film expertly displays in embarrassing fashion how much of a hack he truly is. Some scenes are in black-and-white for no reason other than elbowing you in the rib at how it "invokes" NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. If that color change doesn't work for you, then Russo will just plagiarize the opening of the movie and have a couple little moments in Evans City Cemetery. Nearly all of the in-door segments are shot in a hotel, either in the private rooms or in the building's conference room. The zombie camp is literally a public park's tennis court and the bad guy's compound is a hunting cabin. Everything is stitched together with smash cuts or television static as in-between edits. The few moments of geninuely good low budget gore are heavily overshadowed by the extensive use of CGI blood, CGI muzzle flares, and intense closeups of plastic guns. The movie pads out its severely low running time with unfunny and out-of-focus fake commercials using a green screen, a plug of their very real movie website, repeated footage and flashbacks to events that just happened less than a minute ago, low grade video footage of real-life horror conventions and zombie walks, and an out-of-nowhere long cameo by Lloyd Kaufman, Toxie and others at Troma Headquarters. Bad audio capture, bad ADR, bad stock sounds being used, bad music, etc. Nothing god damn works! I have nothing really to say about the acting save for this: Russo is unbelievably uncharismatic and he put himself in the title role just so he can tell dirty jokes, talk about his dick, and try to fondle pretty women.
Many might say that being very critical about a grade-Z product is way too harsh. After all, I literally saw this at a special screening with John A. Russo and the cast and crew present, all of whom declared that they had a blast making it. As someone who has worked on professional movie productions, yes, it can be a very fun experience, especially your very first one. But working behind the scenes on a bad movie can never scrub out how objectively bad it is or how the final product will fall on deaf ears. I and the rest of the paying audience desperately tried to keep our utter disdain for Russo's new film out of his sight but it's quite hard when you're all dead silence during the Q&A. We all sat there, listening on as Russo just went on tangents or spewed out random lies about how zombies are so popular in 2018, how he nearly had one of his exploitation films selected for Sundance and how he used a rap song in a film in 1987 way before hip-hop was a thing. If I really wanted to be a jerk yet give a fair question to Russo, I would glad ask why there's no "in memory" credit for George Romero at the end considering how he stole from him and trampled on his legacy with this garbage. Don't seek this one out but honestly that will be quite easy in this day and age because this will not leave the horror convention circuit.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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