Night of the Living Deb (2015)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Maria Thayer, Michael Cassidy, Ray Wise
Directed by Kyle Rankin
Take one of those offbeat, quirky romance sitcoms from the 90’s, and toss in some undead scavengers roaming the streets, and you’ve got Night of the Living Deb (see what just happened there)? It’s a goofy, moderately-paced lighthearted rom/zom/com (Christ, I swore I’d never use that description for a movie), and for all intents and purposes, it’s passable for a date flick, but toss this one to the denizens of the deceased when it comes to the hardcore zombie-lovers.
From director Kyle Rankin (Infestation) comes the story of a redhead, Deb (Thayer), whose luck in magnetizing the opposite sex isn’t exactly adroit, and one night at the bar, she happens to overhear “the breakup conversation” between Ryan (Cassidy) and his fiancee. So with the rapid-fire pounding down of a little liquid courage, she moves in for the kill. After a blackout of a night, she wakes up in his bed with no recollection of what happened, and neither does Ryan… aah, that beautiful alcohol: erasing potentially damaging memories for centuries!
With the walk of shame in her immediate future, Deb hits the streets to head back home and wallow in her (possible) failure – only problem is, the streets don’t resemble their former self anymore – oh crap, it’s a zombie apocalypse (yawn). It’s not before long that our one-night-stand duo are thrown back together to try to find a way to safety, all the while reassessing their “relationship.” Seriously, if you weren’t down with shows like “Dharma and Greg” or “Mad About You” back in the day, then you’ll most definitely want to pitch this one to the side – the humor REEKS of those two shows.
Acting as somewhat of a saving grace here, the two find themselves on the run and end up at Ryan’s father’s home, played by the ever-so-illustrious Ray Wise. He’s the CEO of a water company whose treatment plant just might be the cause of this clusterfuck. Wise’s mere presence was welcome in the movie and frankly kept me interested for the duration. Some of the interactions between characters came off a little stale, but the dialogue that volleyed between Thayer and Cassidy was pure gold – these two acted as if they’d been married for ages, and simple realism such as that was a nice plus for an otherwise slowly-paced presentation. Gore was minimal at best, and if you’ve seen a billion shuffling zombies, you’ve seen them all – nothing special here.
Overall, I could recommend this as a one-timer to those who want to ease a new relationship with the one they love into horror films – show her you’re a softie.. .either that, or prepare to binge-watch all the seasons of “Mad About You” on Netflix, and believe me, NOBODY wants to do that.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
