Featured

Review: Attack of the Vegan Zombies

I have seen a lot of zombie films, some are good and most are pretty bad. A lot of zombie films just focus on the horror which is fine but sometimes it’s nice to have some kind of story to follow.

Attack of the Vegan Zombies is a decent effort from indie filmmaker, Jim Townsend, who wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the film. If you know anything about zombies, it’s that they crave human flesh or more specifically, the human brain. What we find in this film are plants that crave wine and if it’s got some human blood in it, then all the better.

In a mish mash of Night of the Living Dead meets Sideways meets Revenge of the Nerds, you find some horror, wine, and some nerdy comedy wrapped up in one.

I generally find B-Movies difficult to watch because the acting and the production values are too low for my taste. What is great about this film is that the acting is decent – no award winning performances – but it’s believable and most importantly, it’s watchable. This movie isn’t going appeal to most fans of the zombie genre, however, it’s film worth watching and offers a welcome twist to an overdone genre.

Don’t get me wrong, I can watch zombie flicks until the apocalypse comes but it seems movie companies are churning out so many zombie flicks that they ignore the fact that there can still be a great story amongst such horror. Attack of the Vegan Zombies is about a couple, Joe and Dionne Talbott (played by Jim Townsend and Christine Egan) who are facing another year of a bad crop of grapes and face losing their farm and their home. In a moment of desperation, Dionne seeks help from her mother, who happens to be a witch. Together, they cast a spell on the vineyard and one year later, they find themselves with an amazing harvest of grapes despite the surrounding farms with poor harvests. To add to the mix, four college students are interning on the farm – two “hot” lesbians (or at least curious) and two nerds – when things start to go wrong. The grape plants are hungry for blood and are getting very aggressive and that’s when people start disappearing.

At first, the danger seems to be more about carnivorous plants but as the body counts rises, so do the dead. Don’t let the Vegan part fool you, there is plenty of flesh consumption to go around – and that’s ignoring the short lesbian sex scene.

The “zombie” make up was a mix of green paint and fake plants and the film’s visual effects were handled with some heavy editing and a screeching soundtrack.

Overall, the film is a wonderful effort given the film’s low budget. The nerds were over-acted and annoying and the lesbians seemed more gratuitous than necessary but the cinematography, acting, and the story’s twist on the genre make it a worthwhile entry into the zombie genre.

From Dangermouse:

Attack of the Vegan Zombies is low budget, the makeup isn’t great, the camera begins shaking during some action scenes, and I don’t really consider it much of a zombie movie, but all that doesn’t make it horrible.

As far as the plot goes, I kind of liked the premise of this movie and it’s got that late night cheesy B-movie vibe, which I like. Of course, swigging a few glasses of wine before watching it might help a little as well. I share the above statement of Night of the Living Dead meets Sideways meets Revenge of the Nerds. However, I would throw in Swamp Thing and maybe Evil Dead (the tree scene) as well.

The nerd characters in the movie were way too overdone. Or maybe I’m just defensive because I’m a nerd too. The lesbian scene was not that big of a deal, but hey I’m not complaining. I think my biggest issue was that it took over an hour for the first “zombie” to show up on screen. Even then it wasn’t much of a zombie as instead of roaring “urrrggghhh” or “brains”, they moan “wine”. Attack of the Vegan Zombies does have a smorgasbord of things going on-witches, wine, killer vines, zombies, lesbians, nerds, and more.

It also has some funny lines: “Vegan zombies crave red wine!” and “She was my best friend an hour ago. Now she’s a f**king green zombie!”

Check out the trailer:

Attack of the Vegan Zombies is available for purchase on the film’s official website:  www.attackoftheveganzombies.com as well as on Amazon.com.

A review copy was provided and did not affect the outcome of this review.

Tags: indie, lesbians, nerds, vegan, wine, zombies