Harry Treadaway and his brother Rasmus Hardiker head a gang of none-too-smart bank robbers who are only doing the job to get enough money to save their granddad’s (a perfectly cast Alan Ford) retirement home from closing. Their gang also includes their cousin (a tough safecracker played by the scrumptious Michelle Ryan), and the seriously unbalanced and gung-ho ‘Mental Mickey’ (Ashley Thomas). The heist gets botched of course, but our protagonists emerge from the bank to find that hordes of zombies have descended upon the city. The two brothers and the rest of their motley crew decide they must henceforth journey to the retirement home and save all the old codgers (including Honor Blackman, Georgina Hale, and the late Richard Briers), who themselves prove surprisingly resilient.
Since cockneys and zombies are far from my favourite subjects in horror films, I didn’t expect to have a good time with this 2012 horror/comedy from director Matthias Hoene (his second directorial gig and first of any importance) and writers James Moran and Lucas Roche. However, it’s actually not bad. An amusing bunch of old codgers at least provide more entertainment than the overrated “Shaun of the Dead” was able to. Hell, even the younger cockney twits happened to be more interesting than in most films featuring cockney youths. And at least they’re not layabouts who hang around at home in their dirty-looking underwear like in “Shaun”. Ashley Thomas in particular is so aggressively over the top as the lunatic of the bunch that he’s hilarious. Loved the bit with the metal plate in his head.
The film is nice and gory (and well-done in that respect), but more importantly, some of it is really quite funny. I especially loved the bit with the baby zombie. But the old timers are definitely the highlight here, it was especially funny to hear one of them confusing zombies for vampires and suggesting all they needed was garlic, crucifixes, holy water and Christopher Lee. Fans of Pussy Galore, meanwhile, might be shocked at some of the words that come out of the refined Ms. Honor Blackman’s mouth. My favourite moment, however, was watching a seriously deaf Richard Briers try and outrun zombies with his walking frame. Since these are the slow-lurching zombies, they can’t even catch him, and he’s so deaf that he doesn’t even know they’re chasing him. Priceless. Oh if only, Christopher Lee, Tom Courtney and Brian Cox could’ve beefed up the cast a little (especially since Lee gets name-dropped, though Blackman, Briers, Alan Ford, and Georgina Hale (T-Bag!) are hardly unknowns. The throbbing music score by Jody Jenkins suggests a diet of Romero, Carpenter, and Argento.
I’m still pretty well sick of movies about cockneys and/or zombies, but credit where it’s due, this is one of the better films of its type. For me that’s not saying much, though and the set-up in particular is still very stock-standard. The real fun comes with the old folks.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Fans of this sort of thing (who probably stopped reading when I trashed their beloved “Shaun”) will definitely get the most out of this, but the zombie action here was quite fun. It’s not good, but it’s not half-bad, either.
