There’s something eerily cathartic about a comedy urging man to live in harmony with all supernatural races. Eyes on the prize, humans – vampires, zombies, werewolves, mummies, blobs … not your enemy. Aliens? Maybe. But hear ‘em out before you attack, see?
Dillford High School holds a secret. One might think the secret is that the school naturally plays host to humans, vampires and zombies in equal measure and the students think nothing of it. This is played off well in the opening, where zombies are bused in like special needs children and generally ignored; the neck collar forces them to keep a distance, see? But that hardly matters as the undead in this film are, for the most part, freakishly docile. The secret isn’t that the school houses dead and undead alike without prejudice, the secret (IMHO) is that the student body is Grease-level old.
The three major players of Freaks of Nature are spring chicken Nicholas Braun (currently 27), Mackenzie Davis (28) and Josh Fadem (35, and looks every year of it.) Nicholas Braun was appropriate for this school ten years ago in Sky High. And zombie Mae Whitman (27) can’t seem to escape high school ever, poor thing. You could say, “she couldn’t escape high school to save her life!” Get it? ‘Cause she’s undead … ? Aw, screw you.
Freaks plays like Fast Times at Undead High – Dag (Braun) is in unrequited love with tramp-next-door Lorelei (Vanessa Hudgens, 27) and is at odds with both local mogul (Denis Leary) and the jock brother Chaz (Chris Zylka, 30) of Ned (Fadem). The innocuous Dag solves all of his problems in one fell swoop by throwing a fastball at Chaz’s head. This made me
laugh out loud in the theater … I was alone in said action. Awwww. Petra (Davis) falls for the wrong guy, and when he wants to go all the way, that means making her a vamp, not sex. Then, of course, he treats her like undead chum. Being the not-so-favorite son of Chaz, Sr., nerdy Ned relies on grades; when vampire teacher Keegan-Michael Key fails him to teach a valuable life lesson, he opts for the zombie route.
Then aliens show up. And there’s chaos, fire, and death. Or maybe there was chaos, fire, and death first – I’m not quite sure as there was plenty of classification-baiting and intramural war going on before the aliens. It’s funny how race-relations kinda disappear when it comes to “you’re a vampire” – oh, there’s plenty of vampire discrimination, but no apparent different between black vampires and white vampires.
“I have a dream that my four little abominations will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their hemoglobin.”
–Vampire Martin Luther King, Jr.
No, Vampire MLK, Jr. was not actually a character in the movie.
Sorry, where was I? Yeah, this movie was far more about moments than ideas. Do you enjoy it when “teens” have to strip to avoid aliens? Do you enjoy it when the kids are forced to “sober up” their zombie companion because his currently dead brain is the only one that works among them? Do you like gratuitous voicework from Werner Herzog? I enjoyed all three of these things and thus gave a pass to a film that, truth-be-told, wasn’t well cast and wasn’t very good.
♪Zombies and vamps
Zombies and vamps
Everyone wishes for zombies and vamps
How can I receive a bite?
Just hang around long enough and you might
Zombies and vamps
Zombies and vamps means so much more when I see
Total devastation in all of society♫
Rated R, 92 Minutes
D: Robbie Pickering
W: Oren Uziel
Genre: Why can’t we all just get along?
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who equate horror and comedy
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Bigots or, you know, people with taste; it’s an odd opposition.
♪ Parody inspired by “Silver and Gold”
