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Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

8/10

Stars: Tye Sheridan, David Koechner, Cloris Leachman, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Joey Morgan, Sarah Dumont, Patrick Schwarzenegger

Director: Christopher Landon

The title is so eminently self-explanatory that it is clear this is a movie aimed at horror film fans and not intended for cineastes (apart, perhaps, for those out-and-out genre completists addicted to every single shockfilm release).

Fortunately director (and cowriter with Carrie Evans and Emi Mochizuki) Christopher Landon shows no sign of seeking eminence as an auteur. He tells his grisly, gruesome, foul-mouthed and irredeemable filthy story fast and furiously and peppers the film with more than enough four-letter words to qualify it as a must-see Channel 4 Christmas special.

Baden Powell might well have blenched snow white at the cheerful crude, rude storytelling that sees nerdy high school scouts Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller and Joey Morgan desperate to be accepted as something more than simply geeks during “Junior year where all girls become sluts”. Their unlikely chance to become heroes happens when, on a nighttime camping trip, a plague of people-munching zombies attacks their small town. And, stating the obvious, “Guys, we’re the last line of defence… OK, Scouts, let’s kick some zombie arse”, it’s up to the hormone-driven trio, helped by long-legged strip club waitress Sarah Dumont, to save the town before it’s bombed into oblivion by the US Government…

The staggering zombies are appropriately repulsive, the special effects used to scatter and spatter bit parts all over the place are suitably grisly and Brandon Trost’s gaudy colour cinematography adds a gory sheen to the nightmarish but regrettably funny affair.

To steal from the very best, this may not be art, Jim, but it’s a helluva lot of lurid lowbrow fun.

(And, an added treat for genre completists, it features the most modern horror movie cliché, the cellphone that has no coverage).

Alan Frank

USA 2015. UK Distributor: Paramount. Colour by DeLuxe.
93 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 2, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 1, Swearing 3.

Review date: 07 Nov 2015