Movies

You think they're dead, these zombie-film parodies, but, one after another, they keep lumbering back. Not much brain activity, alas, in this Canadian indie, which rather non-hilariously dispatches its walking corpses to '50s suburbia, where they're put to work as domestic servants and gardeners. For anyone who hasn't pictured the movie's 91 minutes already: In sunny Willard, docile, gray-faced zombies carry golf clubs and duly provide target practice for Red Scare–era schoolkids, until a particularly ravenous ghoul takes a chunk out of old Mrs. Henderson's fleshy arm. Within 20 minutes, Vancouver-based writer-director Andrew Currie leads us to stop expecting actual jokes while squandering the talents of an overqualified cast that includes Dylan Baker and Carrie-Anne Moss as the film's Ward and June Cleaver, and Scottish actor Billy Connolly as the titular zombie-cum-pet and loyal pal of the couple's young son (K'Sun Ray). The movie's Pleasantville sets are well designed on a slim budget, but the '50s-style restraint extends to Currie's tame direction and generally makes a zombie-lover hungry for the real deal à la 28 Weeks Later—which was still taking a bite out of the box office at last check.