Zombie Honeymoon (2004)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Definitely the most underrated movie on IMDB in my opinion. Most of the bad reviews and ratings are probably from kids and guys expecting a standard zombie movie involving an apocalypse and lots of gore and action. This is none of those things, and it offers so much more for the discerning horror movie fan.It is the perfect blend of romance and horror, and deals with a single zombie: A newly married young guy and the hell that his loving wife must endure while trying to stick with her man who is slowly turning into a monster. The horror as well as the drama builds and builds, making this a true horror movie because it involves people you care about.Everyone delivers a great performance, especially Tracy Coogan in a heartbreaking role, and the writing knows where the proper focus is in this movie. There is even a long, very memorable and disturbing scene of a zombie feeding on people that shows only her reaction and none of the gore, demonstrating the director's vision and superb horror sense. The story is simple, but this is about people, and they all pull it off powerfully.It gets better every time I watch it.

The plot: Blissful newlyweds have their honeymoon interrupted by a freak zombie attack. With her husband rapidly turning into a zombie, a woman's loyalty and love are pushed to the limit.The problem with zombie movies is that pretty much everything has been done to death. Yes, even zombie romantic comedies are nothing new. It takes a lot to actually make your movie stand out in a genre that attracts every low budget filmmaker ever, and this movie was just too flawed. I found much of the movie to be clichéd and derivative, unfortunately.Like most people, my biggest issue was that the wife was too quick to overlook the fact that her husband was an undead, serial killing cannibal. If the movie had built up to this, it would have been much better. Once she found him eating a freshly-killed corpse, there was absolutely nowhere else left to go, except a series of predictable, repetitive scenes where he kills people and eats them, while she wrings her hands.The concept was solid, but the execution failed. Instead of this movie, I recommend I, Zombie or Return of the Living Dead Part 3. Both of those movies were pretty low budget and flawed, but they worked much better than this one, in my opinion.

And now it is time for something completely different. Writer/Director David Gebroe has managed to give us an old fashioned zombie movie with a twist that is unique.We see Denise and Danny rushing from the church to enjoy a honeymoon. They are the happiest of couples. They are lying on the beach and something happens to shake their world. Soon, Denise will have to remember that line she said in church earlier that day - in sickness and in health.Graham Sibley and Tracey Coogan give us very interesting performances as a couple with a special problem. Lots of zombie gore in an interesting twist to the genre.

"Do you take this man? In sickness and in health? 'Till death do you part? For as long as you both shall live?" Truer questions have not been asked and realized for young couple Danny (Graham Sibley) and Denise (Tracy Coogan) Zanders. Recently married and just hours into their honeymoon, things, it would seem, are about to change for the worse. While laying on the beach enjoying the warmth of a summer day, a mysterious decaying man walks out of the ocean and before you can say "I do", he is spewing black goo into the open gasping mouth of young Danny.Rushed to the hospital, Danny flatlines and it would seem that the honeymoon is over. Or is it? Miraculously, ten minutes after death, Danny regains consciousness feeling no worse than my regular Saturday morning hangover.Danny returns back to their retreat and everything appears to be back to normal. That is, until Denise stumbles across Danny in the bathtub feasting on the flesh of an innocent jogger.Torn between her unbridled love for her husband and the haunting realization that his appetite for flesh is on an uncontrollable escalation, Denise walks the thin line of standing by her man – even if her man has a fancy for human skin.To make matters even worse, Danny's flesh begins to turn blue and rot away. Not exactly the skin tone you would be looking for when putting together the honeymoon picture scrapbook. And the only thing bluer than his skin tone is the uniform of a prying police officer that seems unassuming, but might be more analytical of the situation than we are lead to believe.I must admit that it was the title that first drew me to Zombie Honeymoon. I hadn't heard of writer/director David Gebroe and even as I scan his biography, there is not a recognizable name or association that might set off a small bell in my noggin. But there was something about the title that had the promise of being fun and a little grotesque all at the same time. I took the chance and purchased the DVD thinking that I might eventually get around to a Saturday afternoon sequester and by the time I got around to viewing, I was sorry I wasted previous week-ends with much inferior pieces of supposed horror.Zombie Honeymoon is one of those few zombie films that really works thanks to a smart script and acting by the two leads that is about as good as anything I have seen in small budget films of the genre. Graham Sibley and Tracy Coogan do such a believable job with a difficult topic that you actually feel for these two characters and you root for their cause of trying to find a happy medium between dead and undead (It reminded me of what Fido (2006) wanted to conjour).For those of you that prefer gore to story, there are enough scenes of flesh munching to keep you interested, but let's face the fact that this is small budget and we have seen zombie's eating people for years without really seeing anything 'new' with the culture.I can't say that I will follow David Gebroe's odyssey going further, but if this film is just a stepping stone, he could be one of those rare talents that puts together scares, spooks, horror and humor with smart dialogue spoken by believable characters. Kudos to that.www.robertsreviews.com www.killerreviews.com