"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 5/8/02: "Infested"
By JOE BOB BRIGGS
Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas
If you hated "The Big Chill" as much as I did--whiny self-
involved bores acting like their lives of tedium actually MATTER-
-then you're gonna love "Infested," the film debut of El Lay
writer/director Josh Olson, who dared to ask the question, "What
if the 'Big Chill' people were attacked by thick swarms of
genetically-engineered killer flies that turned them into zombies
intent on devouring one another?"
This is soooooooooo satisfying.
Actually it kinda snuck up on me. I had no idea what it was
about when I sat down to watch it, and after about twenty minutes
you're going, "Uh, this is sort of Big Chilly twenty years
later," with upwardly mobile chatterers arriving in their SUVs
for a friend's funeral and then deciding to stay at the oversized
beach house of a trendy dot-com couple. But then a beach-bathing
cutie named Mindy gets INFESTED by flies that have escaped from
the local government research facility, and pretty soon you've
got an all-out Zombierama on the well-tended lawn, with the
huddled masses inside the house praying that the one cell phone
does something other than "Search for Service."
I don't wanna give away any more of the plot, but this flick
has some of the funniest gore effects since "The Evil Dead,"
including a headless undead yuppie who just won't give up and a
scene of razor-blade self-surgery on a gooey leg wound that will
have you begging for mercy.
Add to this the fact that the zombies never forget anything
in the brain that they devour, and you have them easily
distracted by a scratchy 45 recording of "Da Da Da," which makes
them involuntarily do the herky-jerky dance when they SHOULD be
pulling crowbars out of their stomach. The "rules" of this
particular zombification are a little hard to follow, but it
seems that the flies must enter by the mouth. Once inside, they
must STAY inside, unless it's dark, because they spontaneously
combust in any direct light. And there are so many of them that
the only way to kill the zombies is to pierce the body in as many
places as possible, then zap the escaping fly swarm with flaming
aerosol spray.
Amy Jo Johnson, the outsider at the party and girlfriend of
the dead guy, is the pretty obvious Final Girl and turns in a
fine performance, but the great funny moments are carried by
Robert Duncan Merrill, as the small-time drug dealer, and David
Packer, as the terminally horny newspaper reporter.
Oh, and one more thing . . . cutting off their heads doesn't
work. In fact, cutting off the whole upper half of their bodies
doesn't work. These are the kind of zombies that need massive
special-effects cremation. And they deserve it. This is the movie
that "The Swarm" SHOULD have been.
Okay, let's take a look at those drive-in totals:
Nine dead bodies. Two breasts (that should count double).
Flaming flies. Beach-bag teleporting. Multiple fly swarms. One
kiss of death. One strangulation. Self-neck-breaking. Crowbar
through the gizzards. Fly shampoo. Zombie-torching. Leg-breaking.
Ecstasy-gulping. Shovel-bashing. Interior Fly Cam. Head rolls.
Twitching torsoless zombie. Exploding house. One motor vehicle
chase. Gratuitous bump-dancing. SUV Fu. Fire poker Fu. Drive-In
Academy Award nominations for Jack Mulcahy, as the sour jealous
husband who says "I saw how you looked at that guy--that ACTOR";
Amy Jo Johnson, the retired Power Puff Girl, who says "Your TV
show sucks!" as she slashes a zombie's stomach; Mark Margolis, as
the weirdbeard priest who talks about "our empty lifeless shells"
at a graveside service; David Packer, as the reporter who defends
his Lewinsky coverage; Lisa Ann Hadley, as the med-school dropout
who still has a jones for her college boyfriend; Tuc Watkins, as
the bored dot-commer who learns to like zombification; Robert
Duncan McNeill, as the ecstasy-peddling party boy who says "They
don't strike me as ordinary flies"; Zach Galligan, as the actor
on a doctor show; Daniel Jenkins as the wacky dead guy who
believes that "human beings are a plague on the planet"; and Josh
Olson, the writer/director, for doing things the drive-in way.
Four stars. Joe Bob says check it out.