Fresh Meat

Life After Beth

Life After Beth

Life After Beth (2014)

It's All About Aubrey

Movie / Stroller / One-to-One / Zombie Romance

Aubrey Plaza’s deadpan, off-kilter, unpredictable manic energy seems perfectly suited for horror in general and the Zombie World in particular. And though Life After Beth had a whole bunch’a problems, Plaza – as usual – never fail to impress.

As one critic put it, “It's an age-old story. Boy loses girl. Boy finds girl. Boy realizes girl is undead.” And that basically sums up the premise. Conceived by writer/director Jeff Baena (Horse Girl, I Heart Huckabees), who also by pure coincidence happens to be married to Aubrey Plaza, the story doesn’t follow any classic zombie rules. Beth herself – killed by a snake bite – remains coherent for a long time, though increasingly hot-tempered and violent, until things get truly out of control in the third act.

Not a big hit, not terribly well-received, it seems to have more in common with “bedroom community” zomromcoms like Fido or Warm Bodies than it does with Night of the Living Dead. But Plaza carries it well and – for the most part – makes it work. She’s also aided and abetted by an astonishingly strong supporting cast, from Dane DeHaan to John C. Reilliy to Molly Shannon and Cheryl Hines and Paul Reiser and Matthew Gray Gubler and Anna Kendrick – Anna Kendrick! -- as the ‘final girl,’ of a sort.

Some good laughs, some memorable moments (love that refrigerator!) and a ‘must-have’ for the Aubrey Plaza completist, this one’s worth a few drinks and a lounge on some quiet Saturday night.


Click Here to Buy!

Fear the walking dead, the walking dead, TWD, zombies, zombie television, tv series, zombie tv series, zombies, zombie horror, post apocalyptic, zombie apocalypse

Fear the Walking Dead

Fear the Walking Dead

After the Outbreak / Shamblerz / TC Series

Fear the Walking Dead has been an up-and-down experience from the very beginning, way back in 2015. After a promising start (those first few episodes, covering the first few days of the outbreak, still hold up surprisingly well), the series follows a single, troubled Los Angeles family in its flight from the walkers, its separation and reunion, and the introduction of some alternately fascinating and damn boring characers along the way. Yes, it went down some fairly murky and unsatisfying paths and, at the same time, brought in some strong and intriguing characters that have gone the distance, especially Morgan (Lennie James), recruited from the ‘parent’ series, The Walking Dead, and Jenna Elfman in a surprisingly successful dramatic turn. And after seven broadcast years, and far more than in TWD years, after the infamous “time jump” between Seasons 3 and 4, only Season 1's supermom Madison (Kim Dickens) and mysterious, dangerous barber-assassin Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) are here for the final days.

You can watch any or all of the first seven seasons here, on Hulu, and rent or buy all the released episodes of Season 8 here, on Amazon Prime.

Meanwhile, this is far from the end for the Walking Dead universe, with the series featuring the continuing adventures of Darrell and a visit to new walker-infested New York City for Negan and Maggie. And who knows what-all else?

We’ll keep you informed...

ZNation

ZNation

ZNation:

A Wide, Wild, Well-Remembered TV Series That Still Holds Up

TV / After the Apocaypse / Shamblers

The big debate at ZGG International HQ is whether ZNation  is a tragedy/thriller or a comedy/thriller or just a mishy-moshy combo that doesn’t know its own mind. And the generally agreed-upon answer: it don’t matter. There is some great zombie-action and some bizarre, “Did they really just do that?” laughs to be had in its five seasons and 68 episodes. And unlike its spin-off/prequel, Black Summer, it can still be purchased.

The “government experiment gone wrong” trope that’s at the center of ZNation gets a fun little twist here, in that the one escapee of the guv’s experimental zom-vax project slowly turns into an icky and fascinating hybrid of both human and dead-guy over the course of the series. And that’s only the beginning of things getting weird. It’s a shame that SyFy ended it when they did, but with a large and vocal fan base, the possibility that the series could return in some form or another is very real. Until then, enjoy its rich and wild legacy.


Click Here to Buy!

Ex-Heroes

Ex-Heroes

Ex-Heroes: A great series of  Super-Heroes v. Zombies novels

Movie / Shambler / Years After the Apocalypse

What comics fan hasn’t asked themselves, Who would win a fight between Superman or the Hulk? By the same token, what comics or zombie fan hasn’t wondered how the cape types would fare against the walking dead if it ever came to that.

From 2013 to 2016, novelist Peter Clines had a hell of a good time answering that question while building a whole pantheon of convincing stretch-suiters along the way, in a series of novels from Broadway Books that are, quite basically, Superheroes vs. Zombies taken to the logical extreme. It's called the Ex-Heroes Series.

They’re fast, frequently funny, often bloody and both exciting and tragic, as we follow the superheroes who fight a losing battle against the hordes of the shambling dead and their extremely noisy teeth – your basic virus-based biters that have taken over whole cities, whole countries, and left the last few humans cowering behind a dwindling number of walled compounds. Many of the characters continue from book to book – books with totally cool names like Ex-Patriots, Ex-Communciation, and our personal favorite, Ex-Purgatory. And plenty more die heroic and occasionally pointless deaths. There’s no true ending to the timeline, and we can always hope for more, though Clines has gone on to best-seller status with his non-zombie-ish Threshold series. Still, you can spend plenty of happy hours following the dark adventures of Stealth, Zzzap, The Mighty Dragon, and the rest.

Pretty much anything by Peter Clines is worth the read. You can check out his full repertoire here. Exactly what you’d expect from the one-time prop master of Psycho Beach Party.


Click Here to Buy!