Posted by I watched this a while ago but haven’t done a review for it. I’m a big fan of both zombies and comedies – so zombie-comedies tend to be a big win with me. Drew Barrymore is hit and miss with me, but I do like Timothy Olyphant so I gave it a try.
Drew plays a character named Shiela, she and her husband Joel are both real estate agents. It opens with them trying to sell a house, but Shiela becomes extremely sick and throws up everywhere, it’s on the ceiling, all over the walls, all over the mirror etc. Amongst all the bile and stomach contents they find a small red blob about the size of a golf ball, it looks like it could be an organ or a tumor of some kind. When they get home Sheila starts acting different, her sex drive is up, her moods are all over the place and the most alarming bit is that she no longer has a heartbeat.
Sheila is undead, and craving raw meat – she can’t stand any kind of ‘normal food’ anymore. Then, along comes a guy who can’t take no for an answer, and he tries to blackmail her into having sex with him, saying that he’d tell her husband she’s having an affair if she doesn’t sleep with him. So she eats him. That was pretty satisfying. Eating Gary does lead to an insatiable urge to eat human beings though, so she and her husband have to cover up a string of murders and cannibalism from her friends and neighbors which is difficult because one of their neighbors is a cop and he’s sticking his nose into business he shouldn’t. He’s constantly monitoring what they’re doing and asking weird questions and coming over to their house and talking to them as they come and go from the house. He’s an incredibly annoying character to me because I’ve had neighbors just like that. Don’t be that guy.
Their teenage daughter is up to date on what’s going on despite them trying to hide details from her. . Abby is a sarcastic and intelligent teenager, what I really loved about her is that there was very little angst. She got most of her frustrations out with quips or defaulting to indifference. She’s not the kind to bullshit and she doesn’t appreciate being lied to. Overall, she handles her mom turning into a zombie/undead fairly well. It’s a failing battle to keep this under wraps and it’s compounded by a second, but no less important problem. Sheila is starting to fall apart, it starts with a pinky toe that falls off, and then moves onto the fingers. She faces a very real problem that she may literally fall to pieces.
The acting in this is overdone and exaggerated, it doesn’t take itself seriously at all. It’s not meant to be something that evokes emotion, it’s a turn your brain off and have a little fun kind of tv. You kind of have to accept the absurdity of the show, there are a bunch of things that just aren’t realistic. The husband’s reaction to coming home to his wife eating a guy is very lackluster, bro just sort of rolls with it and helps bury the body. If you relax and let the over-the-top plotline play out you can have a good time with it. There was way more blood and gore than I expected, I mean I knew it was about a zombie lady but there were a LOT of bodies.
For what it is, it’s fairly entertaining. After a few episodes, I found myself sucked into the story, despite it being an extremely silly show with some questionable acting it was pretty entertaining. It’s not something I’d go ranting and raving about for people to go watch it, but I think there’s a target audience out there that would really love it. It’s also something easy you can put on in the background as you multitask, it’s not hard to follow.
Plot: 19.5/25
Characters: 16/25
Acting: 18.5/25
Effects: 20/25
My Score: 74/100