Movie Movie Podcast

This week I had no idea what the hell to make a shitty diapery movie about this week, until I started listening to Zombie by The Cranberries.  Then it came to me: A movie about zombies for kids!

In 2040, the world has been ravaged by war and nuclear fallout.  97% of the population in the world has been killed as a result.  One unintended side-effect of the war is that once the radiation began devastating the land, with it came the zombie plague.  Apparently zombies can be created by taking perfectly normal people and exposing them to radiation.  That is necessary for this movie.  Ok so there are very few uninfected humans left on earth, and the zombies have begun banding together to, like families to find the humans and feast on them so that they can survive.

The move opens on a homeless man running in a cornfield in Kansas.  He is being chased by what looks like a pack of ravenous zombies.   He eventually trips and falls into a trap. The zombies stop running and slowly walk up to pit.  The man is screaming for his life, and just as the music reaches its peak, one of the zombies says “dinners ready!” The next scene is that pack of zombies sitting at a dinner table eating the man in a very civilized fashion.  It is clear that this is a family of zombies.  JK Simmons plays the father zombie Bob, Susan Sarandon is the mother zombie Clara, and Freddie Highmore plays the young zombie son, Kevin.  While Bob and Clara are munching on the homeless man’s innards, Kevin gets up from the dinner table.  Bob tells him to sit and finish his dinner.  Kevin says he’d rather have dinner like they used to.  Mashed potatoes, meatloaf, a glass of milk etc. etc.  Clara explains that things are different now and they need the flesh of humans to stay alive.  Disappointed with this, but also very hungry, Kevin starts gnawing on some fingers.

Afterwards he goes back to his room and looks out a window  into the rain (which is black now because of all the nuclear shit) and says “I wish I didn’t love human flesh…” and he goes to bed.

In the morning, Bob wakes Kevin up out of bed and tells him that it’s time to go hunting.  With the winter season coming up, finding good human to eat is going to be a lot tougher, and if they don’t start stockpiling bodies in the garage, they might starve.  Kevin, obviously looking troubled by this asks “dad…are we cannibals?” “NO!” replies Bob and explains that if they were human and eating other humans they’d be cannibals, but because of all the pollution and war, they aren’t human anymore, but they still need to survive, and if it means eating their former brethren, then so be it.

As Kevin and Bob set out of their home to go human-hunting, Clara packs them both brown bags of flesh for lunch and we see the blood dripping through the bags.

Armed with knives and clubs they go out into the forest.  While Bob is going to set up some traps Kevin goes wandering around the woods and hears a sound.  It’s a human! He chases after the human and remembers that they have a trap set up close by, so he stops running and he sees that the human is a small girl, not much older than he (if he were alive…). She pleads for him to spare her life and he says that he can’t.  As much as he wants to, he needs to eat her so that he and his family can live.  He says ok, but just this once.  He cuts her out of the net and she slowly walks up to him examining his decaying face.  She tells him her name is Oleander and says thank you and runs away.  She is played by Elle Fanning.

After hunting, he goes home and asks his mom, what would happen if a zombie and a human were to fall in love.  Clara tell him that it isn’t possible.  They are monsters, and monsters could never fall in love with anything this isn’t  a monster.  The next day after eating some human, he goes out to that same spot to see if he’ll run into Oleander again.  He doesn’t, but there is a single white Oleander  flower growing in the forest right by where his net trap was.  He picks it and brings it home.

That night while he’s sleeping, he wakes to rocks being thrown at his window and it’s Oleander.  She climbs up the side of his house and comes into his room.  She comes because she wanted to warn him that her father Nathan, played by John C. McGinley has been hunting the zombies in the area, saw the traps and is planning on breaking into local homes to kill any of the zombies that are there.  He’s the leader of a human resistance and lost his wife and Oleanders mother to zombies, and would clearly be upset if he knew his daughter was fraternizing with zombie.   Before she leaves she trips on a human bone lying on his floor and says “if you didn’t want to eat us, I would think you were just as human as any one of us” he says “thanks, i think” and she leaves.  In the morning he goes down to breakfast and he notices that his parents are eating one of the human resistance fighters.  He tells Bob and Clara that he met a girl named Oleander and he thinks he might love her.

(ok two things so far.  why the fuck are zombies sleeping? they are undead.  it’s kind of pointless. they don’t need rest.  also, how does he love anyone yet?)

Bob and Clara tell him that he needs to murder her next time he sees her, because she’s food and you can’t love your food.  He says he wont do it, and runs out of the house.

I’m getting tired of writing this, so a bunch of other shit happens and they start secretly dating and then one day as he’s leaving their secret spot in the woods, Nathan catches him and brings him back to the human resistance camp.  He plans to dissect Kevin in order to find a cure.  Oleander begs him not to because she loves him.  and Nathan refuses to believe this.  “You can’t love a monster” he says.  Bob and Clara notice that Kevin did not come back for his curfew yet, and go out looking for him.  In the woods they hear a loud commotion and think that Kevin might be in danger.  They get to the camp and see that Kevin is strung up and prepared for his dissection in the morning. They sneak up on two of the guards and kill them and eat them and go into the camp.  Oleander intercepts them and tells them to hide before her father knows they are there. She sneaks around with them and eventually frees Kevin at night, but not before Nathan sees this.

This all leads to a showdown between the parents arguing about stuff and Oleander yells for them stop.  She loves him, and Kevin says he loves her to and they run to each others arms and kiss for the first time. Something magical then happens. Their kiss is the kiss of true love which is the only thing that can break the spell of zombieism.  At once all of the zombies are cured and their bodies become normal again.

Kevin and Oleander become the King and Queen of New America and help lead the remaining population into a rebuilding phase and everything works out in the end.  Unless we need a sequel.