YUMMY

AVEC DES SPOILIERES

The zombie movie has long since passed. Unless you're George Romero (and, let's be honest, you're not), there's now very little use for the ambulant undead outside of harmless knockabout (Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, Dance Of The Dead), small-scale serious dramas (Maggie, The Cured), the rom-zom-com (Warm Bodies, Life After Beth) and the odd videogame gorefest (Dead Rising, Resident Evil). Running or shuffling, they're not scary any more, but that's not to say they can't still be the source of grossout fun in a silly, gory way as this Balkan-set Belgian comedy shows.

Detailing the allegedly hilarious antics of the sleazy staff and bemused patients at an Eastern European plastic surgery clinic when the first zombie is inadvertently let loose, Yummy is amusing enough but, in the absence of anything else to do, sometimes stumbles over the bad taste line. Centering around a massively-breasted young woman who wants to be reduced from a G-cup to a mere B (she can't run and it gives her backache) and her hapless boyfriend who's immediately suspicious of the dubious medical practices, it swiftly sets off its flesh-eating ghoul contagion to bring us some grisly set-pieces (including a scene of escalating penis violence which is probably the most memorable sequence in the film), the now-mandatory downbeat ending and not much else.

The film, much like its zombie hordes, isn't scary or creepy and doesn't even make you jump. It's more interested in the blood and grue, which it delivers efficiently enough. But I do miss the idea of taking the zombs seriously, either as a metaphor for some social observation or as a simple scary monster, and even by the standards of the Resident Evil series, the reasons for the living dead's existence are pretty silly. There's still some grisly fun to be had with Yummy, but there's not much that's new or different. A recent addition to Shudder.

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