Dear readers, before I can move forward with my review of We Are Zombies, it’s only right that I inform you that I will be very biased in my assessment of this movie. First off, I’m a big fan of the works from filmmaking trio RKSS (short for Roadkill Superstar, made up of François Simard, Anouk Whissel and Yoann-Karl Whissel), and their debut feature Turbo Kid is one of my all-time favorites. Secondly, I went to college with some of the cast (though I won’t reveal who) and have seen them grow from background to principal characters. Finally, the film was shot around my home city of Montreal and I can pinpoint exactly where many scenes took place.
But I am not alone in my love for both RKSS and We Are Zombies. Its world premiere was chosen to be the closing film for this year’s Fantasia Film Festival. Before it even screened to a sold-out room, there was a standing ovation when the hometown heroes entered. And at the end of the festival, it was given the Gold Audience Award for Best Quebec Feature. Expectations were high and yet RKSS still knocked it out of the park.
“…so many jokes that the audience has very little time to react and laugh in between.”
In the near future, death is not the end. Zombies roam the streets, but are seen more as a nuisance rather than a threat. These undead ghouls have no craving for human flesh, and some retain more brain function than others, so the population has learned to live with them, referring to them as the “living-impaired.” Our story follows Freddy (Derek Johns, The Sacrifice Game), a lovable idiot obsessed with wrestling, his best friend Karl (Alexandre Nachi, 1991), a nerd obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons and zombie porn, and his sister Maggie (Megan Peta Hill, Riverdale) who’s consumed with getting revenge on her former employer, the Coleman Corporation, a company that collects and studies zombies signed over by families no longer willing to take care of the decaying living corpse.
Maggie’s plan is to infiltrate calls from Coleman, have Karl and Freddy pick up zombies posing as Coleman workers, and then sell the zombies off to the eccentric performance artist Otto Maddox (Stéphane Demers, District 31). The real Coleman employees, Stanley (Patrick Abellard, Tales From the Hood 3) and Rocco (professional wrestler Marc-André Boulanger AKA Franky the Mobster) catch onto Maggie’s scheme, so they kidnap her and Karl’s grandmother (Clare Coulter, the Worst Witch), and hold her for ransom to make up for their lost wages. The three friends must find a way to get the money fast to get their granny back, but soon find themselves in Coleman’s evil plot to turn the zombies into a weapon.
“Gorehounds and wrestling fans alike will be hooting and hollering with each successive kill.”
The movie is based on the French graphic novel series Les Zombies Qui Ont Mangé le Monde (The Zombies Who Ate the World) written by Jerry Frissen and illustrated by Guy Davis. RKSS were given carte-blanche for the script of their adaptation, keeping the setting and the main protagonists, but going with a straight-forward quest-for-quick-cash story instead of staying faithful to the comic’s plot, which from my understanding involved fighting the zombie of George W. Bush with the help of the Second Coming of Jesus. That would have been a bit too ridiculous for the audience to wrap their head around.
But there’s still plenty of humor for viewers to sink their teeth into. The characters have big cartoonish personalities, and the zombies are a great source of visual comedy. The zombification process is almost instant. One moment, someone is dead, and seconds later they’re back from the dead, a look achieved with gray eye contacts and a slightly pale complexion. These zombies abide by the Return of the Living Dead rules, where they have the ability to speak, and decapitation isn’t enough to kill them (again). A showdown in the final act packs in a lot of action and a lot of jokes, so many that the audience has very little time to react and laugh in between. However, gorehounds and wrestling fans alike will be hooting and hollering with each successive kill.
“…plenty of humor for viewers to sink their teeth into”
Once again, RKSS have brought on previous collaborators like cinematographer Jean-Philippe Bernier (Dinner in America), who also composed the original score with Jean-Nicolas Leupi under their synthwave band Le Matos. Special effects were provided by the Blood Brothers, Jean-Mathieu Bérubé and Carlo Harrietha, who had also worked on other Canadian splatterpieces like Slaxx, Game of Death and Blood Quantum. After toning down the violence in favor of realism for Summer of 84, I was overjoyed that RKSS brought back the inventive deaths and explosive gore that made me fall in love with Turbo Kid.
So yes, going into this movie, I knew I was going to be giving it a high score. But given everything I’ve described above, doesn’t it make you want to watch it for yourself so that you too can be included in the fun? If you enjoyed horror comedies like Fido or Zombieland, then you definitely will want to see We Are Zombies the second you get the chance. Then you can become as obsessed with RKSS as I am.
RKSS’ We Are Zombies celebrated its world premiere at the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival. Click HERE to follow our continued coverage of the festival and let us know if you’re a fan of RKSS over Twitter, Threads, or in the Nightmare on Film Street Discord! Not a social media fan? Get more horror delivered straight to your inbox by joining the Neighbourhood Watch Newsletter.
