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Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse



Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse:


At some point... I will be making a list of the X worst movies of this year, and it will take a really impressive failure to not let The Gallows sit at #1.
Well, that was a really impressive failure. It's okay, me from the past. You acknowledged that things could get worse. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (Which should really be Scouts' Guide, indicating that the scouts possess the guide, but there are bigger fish to fry than the grammar of the title) is about a trio of scouts and their stripper/"I'm not a stripper, I'm a cocktail waitress!!!" friend who have to fight an apocalypse of zombies. Through an impressive combination of obnoxious characters and sex jokes for 12 year olds, this film manages to be the most difficult to sit through thing I've sat through in a long, long time.

The movie stars Tye Sheridan (the kid from Mud and Tree of Life who should be able to do better than this), Logan Miller ("famous" in the loosest sense of the word from his work on the Disney Channel), and Joey Morgan as the scouts. Tye plays Ben, the generic protagonist with no personality. Joey plays Augie, the fat kid. He doesn't have much of a personality beyond being the fat kid. He is jolly, dumb, and immature, but he's trying so hard. Logan Miller plays Carter, the dick. I've been noticing this problem a lot lately in films with teenage casts, especially with horror movies. They all have one of the protagonists' friends be a completely horrible person who does nothing but bully others and make dumb sex jokes. The filmmakers want us to like, or at least tolerate, this person. This trend is getting really annoying. There is no reason why these awkward but goodhearted kids would ever want to be around somebody as obnoxious as Carter. These kids aren't awful actors, but I refuse to call any of them good. I don't expect character development from a horror-comedy, but the one note traits they assigned to these kids are protagonist, fat, and annoying. Only one of those is actually a trait that a person can have. The writing fails in many ways, but the biggest one is the non-characters we have to watch.

That's not to say the jokes are any better. Everything is either about sex or poop. They're basic jokes, too. These high school sophomores are reacting to sexual things like they have never seen them. Oh my god, panties! Boobs! A penis! There is nothing to say about these things, they just flash them onscreen and you're supposed to laugh. I guess the humor is supposed to come from it being zombies that are doing these things. A zombie is stripping! A zombie has a penis! The worst one is when the kids have to climb down a building and one needs to hold onto the zombie's penis to avoid falling. Carter is standing in back yelling helpful advice such as "Aw, dude, hold onto that dick bro." Singing Brittney Spears for no reason whatsoever obviously isn't funny. There is no inherent joke in singing Hit Me Baby One More Time. It doesn't get any funnier if it is a zombie that sings it. These jokes are a waste of time, and the ironic thing is that they don't actually spend that much time telling them. This is another "horror-comedy" that is really a comedy dressed up in a horror setting and never attempts to be scary, but all of the jokes are treated like set pieces. Nobody just says a funny line, they have to establish a situation, wait for zombies to enter it, and then solve their problem by means of a joke that lasts way too long. There is a lot of setup time. I think the writers (4, three rookies and the writer/director, who also wrote/directed Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones) knew this. It feels weird that the director of Paranormal Activity 5, quality aside a horror film, would go for this, clearly a comedy with a lighthearted atmosphere and a few halfhearted jump scares to make it look scary in trailers. The whole plot is essentially zombies taking over and the kids fighting them. There's a MacGuffin thrown in there, as they need to get to a party to save one of their girlfriends, but the whole thing is moving to a new location that they presume safe, waiting for zombies to get close to them, and then surviving with a deus ex sex joke. The film is less than 90 minutes without credits, and even at that it feels too long because of how far some scenes and jokes are stretched.

There isn't much consistency in how the zombies act. Some are homicidal maniacs that run after the first thing they see, some are incapable of running, some casually walk up to people and wait before making a move to kill them. Some zombies have the desires of a zombie, some have the desires of the person they were when they were alive. These things will change whenever the plot says so. If they need the kids to get trapped, the zombies are intense hunters. If they need a stupid joke, the zombie is riding a stripper pole. The tone also lacks consistency. It's a juvenile movie in many parts, which makes it so weird that this is a hard R-rated movie. There is constant swearing and a lot of gore. The 12 year olds probably can't watch this because of the vulgarity. I could complement the production values. The zombie effects look good, the score is fine, and the cinematography is bad but not horrible. But I'm not especially interested in saying positive things. The writing is too awful to tolerate, and far too awful to appreciate any of the decent elements. It might not be as poorly made as The Gallows, but I found it more annoying. Don't waste your time with this.