Oh God That Was TERRIBLE or Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better!

I got suckered into seeing a film at the NSI film fest last night as Jay had some free tickets. The title of the movie sounded promising: "Graveyard Alive: A Zombie Nurse in Love." But oh dear god was it terrible. First of all too much of the dubbing was atrocious, and this wasn't something that you can explain away as intentional. Some of the ADR was perfect, but a lot of it was off... The voices that were used did not fit the actors either. Later we learned that the movie was intended to be a silent movie but when that didn't turn out they recorded dialogue over what the actors had been mouthing. They couldn't get all the same actors so they just used whoever. If that was the only flaw, I could forgive it, as it was born out of necessity. Too bad there was MUCH more crap in the movie. First of all the plot. A nurse gets bit by a zombie and starts to turn into one. She is also in love with a doctor at the hospital of her employ. Sounds ok right? WRONG. There wasn't enough horror in the movie to appeal to a horror fan and there was too much to appeal to a romance movie fan. Granted, it was MOSTLY romance and only a little horror, but it was still a stupid mishmash. It had a few gags that were meant to lighten the mood, but they weren't funny... My question for the filmmaker is: "Who the hell is this movie for?" It's not going to appeal to horror fans (the ones who would go to see it with a title like that) because it is too much of a romance movie, it's not going to appeal to romance fans because of the title and the fact that it has some gore, and its not going to appeal to fans of cheesy movies because it is played too straight. It was shot and scored like a serious "Art" movie when it was not. If you are trying to make a silly movie then you have to go over the top, you can't play it straight and expect it to be funny. The main problem with the whole plot was that when a zombie ate flesh, they reverted to being a normal human again. They would decompose later, but stayed coherent and human as long as they were eating flesh. Ummm.... what? If that logic stayed in the movie throughout fine... but at the end, a human nurse was being chased by the staff of the hospital (now all zombies) who shuffled and moaned like traditional zombies. I understand why that happened, as the director wanted a "zombie movie" ending but it made no sense with the logic of the movie. The film was also broken up with "chapter breaks" that had no purpose and bookended by a guy doing a Rod Serling "twilight zone" voice knockoff. Neither thing needed to be there, they did not fit with the tone of the movie. If I had paid to see it I would feel ripped off... Overall a film like this gives me hope for myself, because I KNOW I could do better. :)
Wednesday night I hung out with Lee and Ashley and we baked a cake! Well, baked as in used a cake mix... but we made the icing! Well... Ashley did most of the work as Lee and I supervised and made snide remarks... We rule!