The
malleable subgenre of the undead zombies rising from the grave to stalk and eat
the living is one of the most played out genres in living memory. Ever since the resurgence of the zombie
genre, jump started by Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later before George A. Romero
got back into it leading up to first-person shooter videogames and eventually The
Walking Dead, zombies quickly oversaturated the marketplace. You couldn’t turn around without running into
one of them. Simply put, the genre unto
itself was arguably overexposed before (for some like myself) fatigue set in. By the time World War Z with Brad Pitt
arrived, there didn’t seem to be much left the genre had to offer in the way of
anything new.
That
is until the South Koreans started to get into it with such smash hits as Train
to Busan, the upcoming #Alive and now Arrow Video’s release of the
2019 zombie rom-com from first time director Lee Min-jae: Zombie for Sale. Released in South Korea under the full title The
Odd Family: Zombie for Sale, this screwball, cartoonish comedy might be the
first zombie related film in some time to do something fresh with the
concept.
Here
a mom-and-pop run gas station, overseen by the Park family, is besieged by the
mysterious arrival of a cabbage-eating teenage zombie whose bite includes the
curious side-effect of rejuvenating one’s youth. That this member of the undead prefers
vegetables to human flesh is the first of many detours this zombie comedy will
take, upending expectations of the genre.
Much like Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar winning Parasite, the Park family
quickly schemes to take advantage of their new visitor by generating business
revenue out of their new visitor’s undead bite.
The moneymaking scheme works…for a while…
An
oddly heartwarming comic thriller with gifted performances from the ensemble
cast and a curious new take on the degrees of the zombie bite, Zombie for Sale
manages to be hilarious and endearing without letting the characters off
the hook as with, say, Zombieland.
Even with all of the Joe Dante inspired uses of cartoon sound effects on
the soundtrack to give the whole thing a Gremlins slip-and-slide on
blood and goo comic slant, the dangers presented by the zombies are very real
and at times I wasn’t sure where this dysfunctional family zombie comedy was taking
me.
Shifting
freely between the scary and the cute, this first-time effort is an impressive
debute, shot handsomely by Cho Hyoung-rae in 2.35:1 panoramic widescreen. Then there’s the score by Hwang Sang-jun which
touches frequently on 1950s inspired ditties for increasingly satirical effect,
particular when the warm tunes are offset by images of arms being bitten.
The film of course wouldn’t work half as well
without the ensemble cast of characters, particularly Jung Ga-ram as the
cabbage eating zombie who treads a fine line in the role between heart throb
and heart-rending terror. Also strong is
Soo Kyung-lee who takes a curious romantic interest in the new undead
arrival. Probably the funniest actor in
the film is Kim Nam-gil, best known for The Fiery Priest who is either
skilled in the art of taking out zombies or just an opportunistic idiot.
For
a genre that has seen as much overexposure as the zombie outbreak film, Zombie
for Sale actually manages to offer something new we haven’t seen before
while still serving up a delightful horror-comedy entertainment. Fans and detractors of the genre will have a
lot of fun with this one, an impish but sweet natured little dark comedy that’s
equal parts astute in the portrait of the dysfunctional nuclear family and
absurd in the ways it sends up the expectations of the genre. One of the better zombie films to come around
in a good while.
--Andrew Kotwicki
