Wasting Away (13 Days Of Hallowe'en)

Much has been made about the fact that we're currently in a vampire film renaissance. Post Twilight there seems to be bloody hunners of them. Mainstream Saturday night crowd stuff, teen boy and girl releases, and in Thirst an arty Asian import vamp flick. Even the latest "must see" HBO show is a suck and fuck fest. But whilst Drac's cousins are tearing up the multiplexes the humourous zombie is still shuffling about Blockbuster's straight to DVD horror section, just next to the Wrestling bit and the badger documentaries. In the horror genre though it's the zombie that wins out in terms of quantity of films. Seriously there's bloody tons of them.

As such there isn't much new to say when making a zombie film. It seems pretty much every connotation has now been done. Even Romero, king of the modern zombie, seems to have nothing new to add to the rotting corpse of the sub-genre. But wait, what's that lumbering slowly over the hill (I'll stop with the zombie metaphors now), why it's first time writer/director/brother team Matthew and Sean Kohnen and their little low budget zombie flick. And you know what? It's actually pretty original!

Wasting Away is told from the angle of the zombies you see. Four friends end up zombified after eating some toxic ice cream, the only thing is they don't realise it, seeing themselves and other infected as normal. As one character states at one point in response to another's claim that they don't feel like a zombie; "well idiots don't feel stupid but they are". As a result of their now lower brain functions they see those not infected moving at hyper speed, leading them to believe that everyone else has become infected instead. The only ones who appear to them normal and they can communicate with are drunk people, lower brain functions again, and vice versa. To show the split between reality and the zombies' perceived reality the filmmakers have chosen to flick between Night Of The Living Dead black and white for the real world and colour for the zombies' fantasy world, a simple yet effective trick:



The film is jam packed with references to films like Evil Dead 2, Re-animator and the Romero films. But it also plays with the cliches of the genre, the only zombie who eats brains is shown to be a curious eater before zombification and as such can't resist shoving the meat on a taco just to see how it tastes. Thanks to the setup there is much humour derived from the simple fact that they don't know they are zombies. As such we see a zombie waiter, a zombie attempt to stealthily intercept an army base and another attempt to ask a father permission to date his daughter not realising that his heartfelt plea merely sounds like moaning to the human ear.

For all the great ideas Wasting Away sometimes struggles to overcome its lack of budget. It also could have done with some tighter editing and script supervision. Some scenes go on too long and the whole zombie job interview is a superfluous distraction that never lives up to the potential of the idea. As such cutting it or possibly finding a way to do it through dialogue after the fact would have been preferable.

Ultimately though Wasting Away is a lot of fun. There's a great central idea supplemented by lots of brilliant twists on the traditional zombie cliches and an absolute load of references for those inclined to play at spotting them. Some budgetary concerns and a slightly saggy middle let it down a tad, but for a first effort this is an treat that points to the Kohnens being ones to watch. They've proved there may be life in the old zombie yet.