Unexciting. Uninteresting. Uninspired. Dull. Bland. Flat. Insipid. Spiritless. Pedestrian. Vapid. Lifeless. Dead. Colorless. I wanted to begin this review with a list of synonyms for “tame” as I didn’t know exactly how many I’d need to describe Zombie Town. Trust me, they all apply. “Spiritless” and “Dead” seem the most appropriate given the Halloween theme, but you really can’t go wrong employing any one of these words to describe this film.
The hamlet of Carver has been so named because it houses the “greatest horror director of all time,” Len Carver (Dan Aykroyd). Yes, Dan Aykroyd. Oh, the film also boasts a bunch of other ex-comedians like Chevy Chase, Scott Thompson, and Bruce McCulloch. I can’t really call them comedians if I no longer find them funny, right? Carver has issued one last film to show at the town theater. I have no idea how the recluse managed to make yet another zombie film, but there it is. And here’s the catch, when the film plays, the townspeople turn into zombies.
Dull zombies. Insipid zombies. Spiritless zombies.
Local wrong-place-wrong-time theater jockey, Mike (Marlon Kazadi), has the honor of collecting the film when Carver drops it off. You can tell a film is good when there’s only one copy and no marketing team. That describes the best films, right? Mike’s would-be girlfriend Amy (Madi Monroe) is a horror junkie and convinces Mike to prescreen the film before the “big” release. At this point, we see 1) there’s something wrong with the film and 2) people in town are turning into zombies anyway.
How does that work?
Did Carver intend the townspeople turn into zombies?
What was the big plan here?
And why does a crude drawing on a hubcap repel the zombies?
These are questions I might have cared about fleetingly while the film was running, but gave up when nothing in the film made me care about anything. Oh, yeah, your film turned us into zombies all right … the kind 
that march right into the theater next door.
What might go unnoticed from the standpoint of poor writing is that the acting in this film is also terrible. I’m pretty sure I’d get better results from any random troupe at your local Junior College. Now, as I say, you’re unlikely to notice because everything else about the film sucks. When major plot points go unexplained and the audience doesn’t really care, well, that’s not a good sign. I’d say that happens about four or five times in the span of Zombie Town. The material is based in an R.L. Stine book, which saddens me because I quite enjoyed Goosebumps. Well, who translates your words makes a big difference, huh? Just ask the producers of Dune and Dune.
I’d say Zombie Town is a hilariously weak offering, but there really wasn’t much humor in this comedy. Were it not for the names involved, I would have guessed this as an offering rejected by the Disney Channel for lack of quality. Only true connoisseurs of Disney+ will understand how insulting that is. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t funny. It had amateur level acting, writing, and directing. Oh, and it didn’t make sense. The one thing Zombie Town had going for itself: it wasn’t evil. Ironic, given the subject matter, huh? The film simply wasn’t good enough to have a POV. But, seriously, when one considers Hubie Halloween and Under Wraps as comparatively brilliant explorations of horror and comedy, well, you’ve done something very, very, very wrong here.
A director of local renown
Wanted to show his new film to the town
But if screening your thread
Turns your critics undead
You’re gonna get more than a few “thumbs down”
Rated PG-13 (really?!), 92 Minutes
Director: Peter Lepeniotis
Writer: Peter Lepeniotis, Michael Samonek, Michael Schwartz (when your movie is this bad, you really only need to put one name on it)
Genre: Did anybody read the script beforehand?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who haven’t yet seen the film
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who have
