Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse - If you’ve seen one ‘zom-com’…

Once upon a time a zombie film was a rarity after the millennium.  Now it seems that the genre has been done to death and distorted and blended with every other genre in an attempt at keeping it fresh.  Here, in ‘Scouts’ Guide to a Zombie Apocalypse’ we have a comedy/horror (or ‘zomcom’ as I’m informed they’re referred to as).  However, a gory undead outing with laughs is nothing new – and it hasn’t been since about 2004’s ‘Shaun of the Dead.’ And, in short, it doesn’t even come close to ‘Shaun of the Dead.’

This isn’t a bad film.  It just offers absolutely nothing new.  If you’re a fan of zombie films then you’ve seen better.  If you’re a fan of zombie-comedy films then you’ve seen better.  If you just like gore there’s about as much gore in the average episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ as you have here.

It’s about a group of geeky scouts who get caught up in an undead uprising.  Pretty soon you have all the tropes you’d come to expect with the genre, i.e. boarding up windows, headshots, have-sex-and-die moments and characters turning into zombies after being bitten.  There’s the obligatory hot girl and geek will they/won’t they subplot and the only really memorable actor (David Kochner) is woefully underused.  This film kind of reminds me of both ’Dance of the Dead’ and ‘Deadheads’ in tone and feel, only they’re both better!

There’s about one really funny (if a little gross!) moment involving what someone is forced to hang on to when about to fall out of windows and the zombie animals made me smile, but that’s about it really.  The ending tries to be exciting, but – guess what – I’ve seen people using hedge trimmers to slice up zombies with before (Peter Jackson’s ‘Braindead’) and I just got annoyed when no one noticed a zombie attack on a crowded dance floor (surely someone would have filmed and uploaded it to Instagram?!).

I can only recommend this if you really love zombie/comedy films and you’ve never seen one before.  Otherwise, just put your DVD of ‘Shaun of the Dead’ in – I know you’ve got a copy somewhere!

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back