LITTLE MONSTERS / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ABE FORSYTHE / STARRING: ALEXANDER ENGLAND, LUPITA NYONG’O, JOSH GAD, STEPHEN PEACOCKE, DIESEL LA TORRACA / RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 15TH
Mix some crude Aussie humour, a school outing and zombies and you get a surprisingly enjoyable film.
Little Monsters starts as more of a rom-com (which, in effect, it is), introducing us to immature loser Dave (England) getting dumped by his girlfriend for not wanting children. He moves in with his sister Tess (Stewart) and his tractor-obsessed nephew Felix (La Torraca), taking an active interest in Felix’s life after falling for his school teacher Miss Caroline (Nyong’o).
Dave tags along on Felix’s school outing to an Australia Zoo-like park which just happens to coincide with a nearby zombie outbreak. Armed only with a ukulele and trapped with the selfish, sex-addicted, alcoholic children’s entertainer Teddy McGiggle (Gad), they must work together to survive and escape.
The zombie genre has been explored to the point of exhaustion in recent years. There are the usual elements – are they fast or slow? Are they smart or dumb? Do they eat animals or only humans? Is it an experiment gone wrong, a curse, a comet over the planet or something else? Are the characters aware of what zombies even are in this universe?
Refreshingly, Little Monsters breathes fresh life into the genre whilst managing to be funny, crude and even heart-warming. We can’t think of another movie that will have you humming along to Taylor Swift and laughing about frog puppets, porcupines, and shooting kids.
