Film Review: DANCE OF THE DEAD (2008)

 DANCE OF THE DEAD (2008) USA 1hr 27mins

Dir: Gregg Bishop

"Ah Hell!" - Gravedigger

"But I don't know how to shoot a machete"- Gwen

The students of Cosa-Rosa High are preparing for their Prom night but things are going to get messy as the nuclear power plant right next to the cemetery is chucking out some weird fumes. The graveyard comes alive and a group of dateless nerds, losers, cheerleaders and a bully band together to save the day! Main loser Jimmy Dunn (Jared Kusnitz) almost loses his girlfriend Lindsey (Grayson Chadwick) after getting detention from the truly obnoxious science teacher Mr. Hammond (Johnathan Spencer) purely for the fact that he cannot take anything seriously, he soon proves him wrong. Lindsey goes to the prom with someone else but doesn't quite make it there as a jaunt with her horny date takes her to the cemetery just as the dead rise and what a glorious sight to behold it is. The group of unlikely heroes team up at a funeral home and with the help of the high school coach (Mark Oliver) and a punk band make a stand to at least try and keep the hordes from the school. 

This hugely likeable teen zombie comedy deserves way more praise and recognition then it did when it was first released way back in 2008. I don't think it ever got a general cinema release outside of the States and was only shown at a select few genre film festivals in the UK and Germany before being released onto DVD. From start to finish it incorporates a broad sense of humour, likeable characters and great practical FX. The opening is one of the funniest sequences of its time featuring a very nonchalant grave digger harvesting various reanimated body parts as they try to make their escape. Even though the characters are likeable the girls are very stereotypical and deliberately annoying with the guys being incredibly nerdy apart from Kyle Grubbin (Justin Wellborn) who is a complete knuckle head but they all bounce off each other very well and they create a difficult to match balance of banter that works effectively. The zombies are fantastic being a mixture of the fast and the slow, shuffling type for the most part. I love the nods to the old school zombies in this with the great practical effects, gooey gore and tons of blood but they also add some effective twists to their walking corpses. When the dead first reanimate they are  ejected from their graves at a tremendous pace which is very impressive and really increases the pace and heart rate. The second twist isn't exactly new and has been used in a few other modern zombie movies both before and after DANCE but in this provides some great comic moments. The zombies respond to music, when they hear music they stop moving and as soon as the music stops playing they are released from their hold. This makes for a great scene involving a punk band rehearsing in a garage. The soundtrack is really impressive and luckily on the punkier side of things then the twinkly pop crap associated with many other teen based movies. More than anything it features an amusing and rousing cover of The Rezillos "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight". The cast are very good in their roles bringing charisma where needed in the form of Kusnitz and Blair Redford and huge comedic value from Carissa Fowler as Gwen, Chandler Darby as Steven and Mark Oliver as Coach Keel. 

In conclusion DANCE OF THE DEAD is hugely entertaining for a teen based movie and surprisingly non twatty in its humour to appeal to a wider audience. If you haven't seen it then please check it out as soon as you can. It is widely available on DVD and Blu Ray at a reasonable price as well as streaming through Amazon Prime. It is high up on my list of popular rewatches and certainly worthy of breaking off a few fingers to snack on during.