3 Short Paragraphs: Black Friday

2021, Casey Tebo (Happy Birthday) -- download

I must have downloaded this around Xmas time as an alternate pseudo-Xmas seasonal flick with curiosity on how they were going to blatantly rip off Bruce Campbell's Evil Dead style monsters, while also having Bruce Campbell star. Did it look terrible? Oh gawds, incredibly so. But remember, so did James Gunn's Slither and that still remains one of my favourite schlock creature features. Both begin their rampage via a meteor crashing to Earth infecting some hapless bystander, but alas this one lacks the guts to think outside the gift box.

So, yeah, alien symbiote thing from a meteor infects some shoppers and staff during the Black Friday weekend, at a parking lot big box store called We Love Toys. The thinly veiled metaphor of violent zombie shoppers on America's largest shopping day is there, of course but the meat of the movie is in the defending min wage workers fighting for their own survival, and only somewhat for their job's survival. The team forced to work this weekend is "led" by Ken (Devon Sawa, Nikita), the divorced dad who thinks his "why work?" attitude makes him cool, but is really self-deluding, including believing he has a chance beyond bored flirtation with the much younger Marnie (Ivana Baquero, holy crap its the little girl from Pan's Labyrinth) and managed by lifer manager Mr. Wexler (an almost entirely wasted [not drunk; opportunity] Bruce Campbell, Bubba Ho-Tep) along with a bevy of bored, not-really-having-any-choices-in-life retail wage slaves.

Zombie shoppers begin morphing into aliens, via the weird pink (yeah THAT pink shade) light at the centre of the store, monsters that go one step further (again, ala Slither) by combining into a giant, single kaiju entity. I wish there was more to say about the plot, but there isn't, and while its not entirely z-grade, as it doesn't try too hard to take itself seriously, its not going to lead to the director being the creator of some of the most creative movies & TV in a decade.