Fantastic Fest 2010: ZOMBIE ROADKILL Review

It is not a common thing for a festival to give an entire slot over to just a single half hour film. And it is not a common thing for a festival to bring in cast and crew and give that film the full on gala treatment. And yet that is exactly what Fantastic Fest has done with Zombie Roadkill. And they've done it for a very simple reason. Because David Green's Sam Raimi produced, Thomas Haden Church starring film - actually an edited together version of a web series due to premiere on FEARnet October 4th - is a hysterically funny tour through everything that makes splatter comedy fun distilled down into its simplest, most direct form without any of that boring stuff that people load into these things to pad the running time.

The setup is familiar. A quartet of college kids - plus one geeky younger brother - are driving through the woods to parts unknown. They are lusty. They are drunk. They are attacked by a sinister, unstoppable force. But this is no slasher. No alien. No unfamiliar creature. No, this is roadside roadkill come back for vengeance. Because, as we learn, this land is not only cursed. No, cursed does not go far enough. This land is fucked.

And so geeky Simon is sent off to save the day helped only by the the mysterious park ranger Chet Masterston - a fantastic performance from Thomas Haden Church who should immediately be placed at the top of the short list for every director prepping horror comedy everywhere - in a desperate quest to survive and save family, friends and hopefully impress Simon's unattainable object of desire in the process.

Laced with a clever sense of humor, a fistful of fantastic gore gags and an admirable desire to everything possible with practical effects, Zombie Roadkill is not a mere throwback to the Raimi school of horror comedy - though Raimi is a clear influence - but the emergence of David Green as a distinct talent in his own right. Though Green is clearly fluent in the language of his cinematic forefathers he's got a style distinctly his own, one that includes a plethora of animal puppets in various states of decomposition.

So mark October 4th on your calendars and add FEARnet to your bookmarks. Because Zombie Roadkill is a film that deserves far, far better than to be overlooked as just a webseries. This is clever, funny, hugely entertaining stuff.