'Deadheads' DVD Review

A flawed but fun and breezy zombie comedy.

Twenty-something slacker Mike (Michael McKiddy) wakes up one day to find himself in the midst of a zombie outbreak. What he doesn't immediately realize is that he too is one of the living dead. For some reason, he's a "high-functioning" zombie who can speak and think as clearly as his living counterparts; he just happens to have body parts falling off of him.

He meets up with another high-functioner named Brent (Ross Kidder), and when Mike's hazy memory clears up, he remembers that he was about to propose to his girlfriend before he died. Brent offers to help him drive across the country to find her, but if fear that she won't accept him (Mike's been dead for three years, after all) doesn't catch up to him, the zombie wranglers working for the mysterious corporation Genutek will.

Deadheads is one of the better zombie comedies ("zom coms") in recent memory, but it's still not in the realm of the best of that subgenre -- Shaun of the Dead, Dead Alive and Return of the Living Dead, to name a few. The humor is well written, the characters are wacky and the cast is likable, although the performances are more basic cable than feature film.

It plays like an adolescent romantic comedy with zombie elements thrown in, meaning that despite writer-directors The Pierce Brothers' pedigree (their father Bart handled special effects photography on The Evil Dead), the film places the zombie aspect too far on the back burner. The script focuses so heavily on the love story that it underdevelops the zombie backstory, leaving viewers with nagging questions that go unanswered. That said, the zombie action that is there features some nice old-school makeup effects, and the characters build up enough good will that Deadheads remains consistently entertaining despite its flaws.

The DVD

Special features include featurettes and director's commentary.

Movie: C+
DVD: C+

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