I, Zombie

I, Zombie

In the midst of a nearly decade-long drought of gory movies, the kind that used to show up regularly in the '80s and have now been mostly relegated to the direct-to-video market, it would only make sense that Fangoria, the magazine dedicated to fans of gory movies, would start releasing its own. Unfortunately, if Fangoria wants to reach beyond its core audience of Mountain Dew-addled teens and pasty 34-year-old men who still live in their parents' basements, it will have to do better than I, Zombie. It's hard to imagine even the most hardened gorehounds appreciating this low-budget English film, which addresses the problems experienced by a young grad student (Giles Aspen) after he is bitten by a zombie. Suddenly disappearing, he leaves behind a worried girlfriend (Ellen Softley) as he takes up residence in a secluded apartment, venturing out only to feed. Presented with the sort of gravity usually reserved for stagings of Titus Andronicus and TV movies about incest, I, Zombie may be the dullest film ever to include the word "zombie" in its title. Though largely given over to an interminable series of scenes that switch back and forth between Aspen's slow degeneration and documentary-style interviews with Softley, I, Zombie doesn't really bottom out until near its conclusion, during a scene in which a zombified Aspen, while in the act of masturbation, becomes detached from an organ integral to the process. There are probably worse ideas for a movie than a feature-length examination of the psychological torment one experiences when one becomes a zombie, but director Andrew Parkinson's film doesn't allow too many to spring to mind.

 
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