Zombeak
Distributor: MVM
Directed by: Sam Drog
Starring: Melissa K Gilbert, Jason Von Stein, Daryl Wilcher, Tracy Yarkoni, Nathan Standrige
Review by: Ben Bussey

It seems like an ordinary enough night down at Cooters, a downmarket restaurant with an uncanny resembelance to a certain other restaurant chain (in case you can’t guess the connection, all the waiting staff are bouyant young women in tiny white vests and butt-hugging shorts). The customers are either complaining or sexually harassing the staff; the manager is either stressing out, or sexually harrassing the staff; and the staff are either being sexually harrassed or slacking. The latter is true of Melissa (the similarly named Ms Gilbert), who skips out on her shift to go out back and make out with her boyfriend (Von Stein). But she picked the wrong night to do so, as a bunch of Emo-looking satanists show up in search of a female body to bear the Antichrist. Stealing Melissa away to their isolated den of devil worship, they pin her down on a pentagram, slit a chicken’s throat over her face, the usual shebang. But when the ritual doesn’t quite go to plan, the essence of Satan finds somewhere unexpected to take residence…

Actually, it’s not that unexpected. I should think from the title you’ve already assessed where Satan ends up. Yes – the dark one possesses the dead chicken. If that concept tickles your fancy, then you may well take some enjoyment from Zombeak. If it doesn’t; well, it’s going to be a long 72 minutes. And if you don’t think 72 minutes is a long time, lemme tell you, certain movies sure make you feel it…

Okay, okay, I’m perhaps being overly harsh here. Zombeak is by no means the worst microbudget DV horror movie I’ve ever seen. Compare it to, say, Taste of Flesh (review here) or Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned (review here), and it’s not all that bad. But, my friends, that is, faint, faint praise indeed. If the best thing that can be said about a movie is that it’s better than Taste of Flesh or BPITBOTD – well, it’s like saying getting kicked in one ball isn’t so bad as being kicked in both balls.

That it’s a one-joke movie should go without saying, but it takes a full half hour to get to this joke. Even once it gets going, there’s very little to hold interest, the bulk of the movie taken up by – gulp – the actors and the dialogue they have been given. Again, by comparison with many other microbudget horrors, including but not limited to those mentioned earlier, Zombeak doesn’t suffer too badly in the acting department. Daryl Wilcher makes for a reasonably entertaining lead Satanist, Nathan Standridge is fairly impressive as a redneck cop to whom the words ‘police brutality’ are a badge of honour, and Melissa K Gilbert makes for a convincing Hooters girl. Ahem. But as initially likeable as some of these performances may be, they get pretty damn tiresome pretty damn quickly. Everyone talks way more than they need to, whilst the plot progresses way slower than it should, with not nearly enough action in the meantime.

More often than not, these kind of movies know their limitations and make up for a lack of invention by filling the blank spots with sex and gore. Indeed, let’s not be coy, a lot of the time that’s what we horror geeks (males particularly) are counting on. But Zombeak doesn’t even have that going for it. Keep it zipped, lads; the vest and shorts may be tiny but they never come off. Same goes for the Satanist chick; and, I hasten to add, the male cast as well. Nor is the gore anything worth writing home about, on which subject I must say – and this is a question that goes out to all microbudget horror filmmakers – we all know that CG blood looks shit even in big-budget productions, so what makes anyone think it’ll look good in a no-budget production? And when we see said CG blood flying and the nearby cast members remain spotlessly clean, well; it just leaves the audience wanting. Sure, Zombeak isn’t striving for any great level of verisimilitude – suspension of disbelief, and all that jazz – but as a viewer I need something a damn sight more entertaining to suspend my disbelief that far.

In closing, I may as well add my usual complaint of DV movies: that it looks pretty poor, and sounds like someone was holding a pillow over the mike for the duration. Part of the lo-fi charm? If you say so. This is one chicken that is not only possessed, but clearly riddled with avian flu; but hey, if you like your horror movies as dumb as they come, then who knows, perhaps Zombeak will fit the bill. (Oops, I mixed bird metaphors. Pun ‘fail,’ as the kids are saying these days.)