SNAPSHOT
Zach (Dane DeHaan) is devastated by the unexpected death of his girlfriend, Beth (Aubrey Plaza). But when she miraculously comes back to life, Zach takes full advantage of the opportunity to share and experience all the things he regretted not doing with her before.However, the newly returned Beth isn’t quite how he remembered her and, before long, Zach’s whole world takes a turn for the worse. (synopsis via Coming Soon)
You could be forgiven for wondering if there would anything remotely funny about someone you love dying and then when you were in the midst of mourning them, coming magically to life again?
Would you be happy to see them? Maybe.
Would that happiness possibly be outweighed by the sheer ever-lovin’ undead weirdness of it all? Quite probably.
But would true love prevail despite all of that? Of course! It’s true love!
Still even true love isn’t without its complications as Dane discovers when his dead-from-a-hiking-accident girlfriend Beth miraculously comes back to life (along with apparently quite a few other people though quite how big a zombie apocalypse is in the offing isn’t made clear in the trailer) and suddenly he has a chance to be the sort of boyfriend he didn’t quite manage to be the first time around.
It all sounds like The Walking Dead meets Hallmark movie of the week right?
The undead but with heart? Well kind of.
What actually happens is that Beth, who has no memory of having died, actually starts to take a turn for the worse on just about every front, despite Zach’s new found loving attitude and the ever-protective care of her parents played by Molly Shannon and John C. Reilly.
As her body starts decaying in a way that no department store cosmetic salesperson is ever going to stand a chance of covering up, her emotions and psychological state start to go backwards too, rendering Beth into the classic zombie gal in no time flat.
While it is a movie that looks to be undeniably playing it for laughs, it also tries to have some serious moments in there too, exploring what it would be like if the deeply loved and cared for did manage to crawl out of the grave and enter your life again.
The only danger with this approach is that sometimes the serious, heartfelt stuff can get swallowed up by the incessant rush to turn everything into a joke although as Zombieland clearly showed, it is more than possible to balance the two and emerge with a movie that makes you laugh and think and feel all at once.
It will be interesting to see on which side of the fence this movie lands when it opens in USA on 15 August 2014 in limited release and UK on 3 October.