Horror fans of a certain age will remember the era of the ‘video nasty’, when cheap and cheerful shockers like THE EVIL DEAD were fashionably decried as morally repugnant and liable to corrupt this nation’s youth. It’s a measure of how far we’ve come that DEAD BEFORE DAWN 3D salutes these films while simultaneously sending them up.
Director April Mullen and writer Tim Doiron, whose mockumentary ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS: THE WAY OF THE TOSSER became a hit at the Cambridge Film Festival a few years back, bring their good-natured, tongue-in-cheek approach to the genre’s over-familiar archetypes and plot conventions. So we have a bunch of college kids – the nerd, the jock, the funny one, the cheerleader etc., most of whom are played by actors who are far too old to be at college, with the notable exception of star Devon Bostick – messing around in a spooky occult store owned by Bostick’s eccentric grandfather (Christopher Lloyd), accidentally breaking an urn and releasing a terrible demon.
The demon apparently has a sense of humour though, because the curse placed on them is one they make up themselves, as they try to frighten each other with every horror movie ingredient they can think of. So anyone who makes eye contact with them after 10pm (not midnight!) will kill themselves, before turning in to a zombie possessed by a demon – a “Zemon”. The curse must be reversed before dawn, otherwise it becomes permanent. Oh, and if you snog one of the Zemons they become your slave (in a tip of the hat to SHAUN OF THE DEAD’s ‘happy’ ending). Cue the race against time and some icky kissing.
Despite obvious budgetary limitations, Mullen’s affectionate spoof has enough energy and wit to appeal to its core audience of horror junkies, though the level of gore on display sadly can’t match that of SHAUN, much less EVIL DEAD II – surely the benchmark for any zombie demon horror comedy. Bostick and Lloyd are the highlights in the cast, while the 3D looks good but offers little in the way of splatter, which one can’t help but feel is a missed opportunity.
httpvh://youtu.be/rqN4AggoCAw
Too bad that you didn’t enjoy it more as a comedy than a horror movie. There is no need to put such big 3D effects in DBD, it was not meant to be a blockbuster where you come out of the theatre with a headache….Wango !
The title “Dead before Dawn” has such a massive stench of Raimi/Campbell about it that you want comedy AND buckets of blood. Not just want – expect and demand. I didn’t make it to the screening but Gav tells me it was suitable for squeamish persons. As for 3D … always gives me a headache, unless it’s a 50s soft porn book. Wango indeed!