Based on comic series The Zombies that Ate the World, We Are Zombies throws us into a slightly unusual zombie apocalypse: one where the dead are just a nuisance. They don’t feed on human brains, they don’t spread a virus, they’re just sort of there, refusing to die, as one of the ‘living impaired’.
In this shuffling corpse-riddled near future, three slackers try intercepting regular zombie collections and find their bungled heist leads to kidnaps, murders, complicated and slightly unfathomable corporate plots and quite a lot of blood, gore, and smutty jokes along the way.
There are some interesting ideas in We Are Zombies, particularly the use of the living impaired as ‘art’ by a kind of Gunther Von Hagens character (although the uber camp artist is not so interesting or original) as well as other forms of zombie exploitation, from zero wage labour to zombie-themed cam shows for ZILF fetishists. However the script is more interested in what shenanigans it can throw its unlikely heroes into and thus loses track of any satire that might be up for grabs, in spite of it also making space for a liberal peppering of pretty juvenile gross-out gags that mostly fail to land (although the fallout from a zombie pedestrian impact is admittedly quite funny).
The key saving grace is three likeable leads (Alexandre Nachi, Derek Johns, and Megan Peta Hill) whose charisma supplants a lot of the work the script fails to do for their characters, and a general feel of a whole cast having a good deal of fun with their roles, even when the dialogue does them no great favours. Fun but thin, We Are Zombies may leave you hungry for something more substantial, or with more braaaains.
