Review: 'Make-Out With Violence'

Zombie films that portray zombies as more than just ambulatory, flesh-eating corpses are a unique breed of film that, unfortunately, are seen far less than one might hope. While the conventional "group of survivors trying to survive a zombie apocalypse" is all well and good, rarely is a unique enough spin placed upon it to make it stand out from the rest. Thankfully, Andy Duensing and Christopher Doyle, known also as the Deagol Brothers, are doing their part to buck the trend with their coming-of-age pseudo-zombie romantic comedy thriller hybrid Make-Out With Violence.

Two twin brothers, Patrick and the unfortunately named Carol, and their younger brother Beetle, are mourning the disappearance of their friend Wendy. Although all friends, Patrick feels affected the most due to his unrequited love for her. After an exhaustive search, she is presumed dead and an "empty casket" funeral is held so those who loved her, which includes her best friend Addy, boyfriend Brian and Addy's friend Anne, could say their goodbyes. Shortly after the funeral, however, Carol and Beetle, exploring for cicadas in a field, stumble across an unexpected discovery: Wendy, tied to a tree, and seemingly neither alive nor dead. Instead of calling the authorities, they take her to the empty house of a friend and attempt to revive her through a number of natural and unnatural means. Awkward realizations and genre confusion ensue.
Make-Out With Violence is a zombie movie insofar as it contains a zombie, though to call it a horror film is a stretch. In fact, one of the biggest problems with the film is its inability to decide what kind of movie it wants to be. After the laborious opening half hour, wherein the background of nearly every central character is developed explicitly through voice-over narration by Beetle, the film undergoes a series of transitions from serious film about death and loss to comedy, with only sporadic bits of horror laced throughout. The attempt to blend genres failed primarily, I think, as a result of its soundtrack, which was noted as having a running time approximately twenty minutes longer than the movie itself. With much of the film's score being composed by by songwriting duo Jordan and Eric Lehning, both of whom starred in the film, the film served as nothing more than a music video, overpopulated with montages that appeared to be nothing more than an excuse to further the story with the bare minimum of effort.

As a result, we're treated in dramatic shifts of tone throughout the film, none of which last for a long enough period of time to firmly solidify the film in any one specific genre. Despite my bias as a horror fan, the film ultimately would have worked better as outright horror with all the teen angst applied only ever so subtly. This comes primarily out of the fantastic performance by Shellie Marie Shartzner, whose sporadic reanimation throughout the film was exceptionally creepy, calling to mind a twisted marionette capable of movement without a master puppeteer. Although her performance was relegated to brief flashbacks and the aforementioned reanimation, she remains one of the few redeeming factors of the film.

Make-Out With Violence sports a solid premise that unfortunately fails to be executed in an enjoyable way. While aspects of the film are enjoyable to a point, the film ultimately plods along at a pace that will have you checking your watch as early as thirty minutes in.