Stag Night of the Dead (2010)

Stag Night of the Dead (2010)
Directed by: Neil Jones
Written by: Neil Jones
Starring: Joe Rainbow, Sebastian Street, Sophie Lovell Anderson

Stag Night of the Dead (2010)

(15) Running time: 82 minutes

Director: Neil Jones

Writer: Neil Jones

Starring: Sebastian Street, Sophie Lovell Anderson, Joe Rainbow, Rez Kempton

Reviewed by: Matt Wavish, official HCF critic

Stag Night of the Dead is a silly zombie film, simple as that, and the enjoyment you get out of this low budget horror comedy depends on how low your standards are. Mine can be pretty low at times, but it would seem not low enough for this. To give you an idea of the sort of comedy on offer here, one of the main fella’s is wearing a T-shirt which states “this is my drinking t-shirt”. Yes, OK then! So here we are, Stag Night of the Dead and the title pretty much says it all. This is a stag night, and yes it involves zombies, and as expected mayhem and silly things come along right on cue, but sadly for me, they just weren’t very funny.

Dean (Sebastian Street) is getting married in the morning, and his mates have organised a stag-do which, oddly enough, begins in the pub. There Dean is granted a dance from a sexy stripper named Candy (Sophie Lovell Anderson), and once Dean has had his last taste of freedom everyone, including the Bride’s Dad and the stripper, head off to places unknown. One of the party, the best man, has organised for the group of drunks to have a bit of a day out shooting zombies. They head to an Army base where a bizarre, popcorn eating man with shades and a dodgy beard and haircut, organises games called ‘Zomball’. The unique game (something which you can actually do now here in the UK, click here for details) allows the players to run around the army base with strange guns, which fire what can only be described as the ‘streams’ you see shot out of the Ghostbusters weaponry. They fire these beams of light at the Zombies and the zombies fall on the floor. It all looks like good fun, we learn the zombies are actually real, created by bird-flu, and the players are given a set of simple rules which shouldn’t be broken.

One- Stay together, Two- Recharge guns at every recharge point, and Three- never humiliate a zombie. Simple enough, but sadly these chaps have less brains than the zombies themselves. They break the humiliation rule, and the zombies turn nasty and all of a sudden things become deadly serious, and forgetting to recharge your gun could cost you your life! Possibly the most annoying out of the bunch falls in love with a female zombie, and you can guess how that ends up. I was hoping the idiot was going to die, but sadly he returns as an even more annoying zombie. The zombie’s themselves are nothing special, a few black marks drawn under the eyes really, and they never feel menacing. When they died I swear you can see the actor playing the zombie trying not to laugh as he falls to the floor! The lads (and stripper) on the stag do are all bloody idiots, and what I don’t understand is once they realise the danger and try to escape, not once did they try and use their mobile phones, even though the things actually worked. The friendships breakdown: with a hilarious scene where one guy’s excuse for sleeping with Dean’s wife being “she was gagging for it!!” He says this over and over, and even though it is cruel, you cannot help but laugh at just how poor the script is.

Stag Night of the Dead is not the worst zombie film I have ever seen, and even has some moments where it really surprises, but sadly the majority of the film is just badly directed, not very funny and lacking in any connection with the characters. I had more fun watching the bizarre man running the show as he eats his popcorn in a hilarious speeded up video. There isn’t much to laugh at here though, the violence is very very tame, the zombie’s are poor, the effects are awful, but so bad they actually give the film a strange charm, but then with the pacing being so painfully slow, you won’t have the momentum to enjoy it. I hated pretty much every character and I struggled to understand why this film was made, it is fair to say I really did not enjoy this. What a poor weekend of horror viewing this has been!

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