DEAD SHACK (2017)

Studio:       Raven Banner Releasing
Director:    Peter Ricq
Writer:       Philippe Ivanusic-Vallee, Davila LeBlanc, Peter Ricq
Producer:  Amber Ripley
Stars:     Matthew Nelson-Mahood, Lizzie Boys, Gabriel LaBelle, Donavon Stinson, Valerie Tian, Lauren Holly

Review Score:

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Summary:

Three teens and a drunken father on a cabin getaway discover their mysterious neighbor is harboring a house full of zombies.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A woman known only as “The Neighbor” lures a man to her secluded woodland home. Drugged, the man stumbles outside to a car. Clad in a welding mask and protective suit, the neighbor shoots out the car window with a shotgun, allowing a zombie to climb inside and eat the man.

Teenager Jason leaves behind his arguing parents to go on a cabin retreat with his best friend Colin, Colin’s father Roger, Roger’s girlfriend Lisa, and Colin’s sister Summer, whom Jason has a crush on. The group stops at a café where Jason briefly observes the neighbor interacting with two drunken young men.

While Roger and Lisa remain at the cabin getting drunk together, the three teens explore the woods. Jason, Colin, and Summer come upon the neighbor’s house, where they find several cars parked outside covered in black goo, as well as a barrel full of melted personal items. The trio hides when the neighbor returns home with the two young men from the café.

From outside, the three teens spy on the other trio. Jason, Colin, and Summer are shocked when they see the two men collapse after drinking drugged wine. They then flee when Colin and Summer see the neighbor feeding the men to her two captive zombie children Quentin and Alicia.

Colin impulsively throws a rock that breaks a car window. The neighbor comes outside to investigate the noise and seemingly spots the three teens as they race back to their cabin.

Jason, Colin, and Summer frantically try to explain what they saw to Roger, who is too drunk to take their claims seriously. Roger instead takes an ax from Jason and decides to investigate the alleged cannibalism for himself. Colin stays behind with Lisa while Jason and Summer accompany Roger.

Roger, Jason, and Summer explore the neighbor’s house, but find it empty. Meanwhile, the neighbor comes to the other cabin and unleashes her zombie husband Harold. Harold devours Lisa while Colin is in the bathroom.

Roger drinks drugged wine left out on a table and falls unconscious. Unable to carry him, Jason and Summer look for a place to safely stash Roger. Jason opens a floorboard hatch but, because of the smell from the room below, decides to put Roger in a closet under the stairs instead.

Another closet door rattles. Summer opens it and Jason immediately swings his ax, only to find that the person on the other side is a bound and gagged prisoner. Gushing blood, the duct-taped man hops into a hallway. A zombie suddenly tackles and begins eating the man. The zombie turns its attention toward the teens, but falls into the floorboard hatch.

The duct-taped man turns into a zombie. Jason and Summer throw him down the hatch too.

Jason and Summer hide from the neighbor and her zombie husband when they cross paths in the forest. Jason and Summer return to their cabin, where they discover Lisa transforming into a zombie. While the two of them impale Lisa with a fireplace poker, Colin blows Lisa’s head apart with a shotgun.

Jason is compelled to tell the siblings that he lies about where he lives because his parents are wealthy, but he is ashamed of their incessant bickering. Jason mentions how envious he is of the love that Roger, Colin, and Summer have as a family despite how much they tease and prank each other.

Resolving to rescue Roger, the three teens suit up and arm themselves with items from an equipment shed. When they arrive at the other cabin, the neighbor releases several zombies to attack. Jason, Colin, and Summer fight their way inside.

The two zombie children break out of their locked room and shamble down the hallway. At the same time, Roger recovers and exits the stairway closet. While Roger has a heart-to-heart moment with Colin, Jason and Summer kill the zombie kids.

The neighbor returns and is horrified to see her children dead. Roger fights the neighbor, who gravely wounds Roger before retreating outside. The three teens begin escorting Roger to a car, but the neighbor reappears and kills Roger with a shotgun blast from behind.

Jason, Colin, and Summer scatter in the ensuing commotion. The neighbor begins stalking Summer. Jason suddenly runs over the neighbor with a truck. Colin then uses a sledgehammer to crush the neighbor’s head as she continues taunting the teens while dying on the ground.

Jason, Colin, and Summer collect Roger’s body and drive away in a truck. Jason takes a call from his parents on his cellphone.

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Review:

Cabin getaways in horror movies never go well.  There’s always a crazy person, a creature, or in Jason’s case, both.

He left behind his bickering parents to take a woodland trip with his prankster pal Colin, Colin’s “I want to be one of the guys” dad Roger, Roger’s latest fling Lisa, and Colin’s tomboy sister Summer, for whom Jason holds a candle burning brighter than the sun.  Best-laid plans of boozing for the adults and trickery in the trees for the teens are going up in smoke however, now that they know what is going on nearby.

A mysterious neighbor just brought home two drunken young men from the café in town.  Jason, Colin, and Summer stumble upon the secluded house thinking they’re about to spy on a threesome.  They get eyefuls of something more surprising when the two men collapse from drugged wine and the woman unlocks a chained door.

It turns out the neighbor doesn’t live alone, except her husband and kids are undead.  Feeding time for this family means fleeing time for the teen trio.  They beat feet back to their cabin but with Roger three sheets to the wind, dad doesn’t fully grasp the cannibalistic chaos that the kids are screaming about.  An already intense situation just became a bigger problem, causing Jason to wonder if he might have been better off at home.

The humorous horror of “Dead Shack” has a fair bit of heart.  The movie’s mood uses a bit of boyish buoyancy from the cute crush causing Jason to blushingly stammer, and from the smartass charm of Colin, the kind of kid who unironically ensures Jason understands that the text he sent earlier depicted an ejaculating penis.  The tree limb doesn’t hang too high from the apple.  Colin’s dad Roger is equally eager to be acknowledged for irreverence, making for a quirky family dynamic where a fart on the face is another way to say, “I love you.”

Donavon Stinson plays Roger like Bobby Moynihan's "Drunk Uncle," yet with more of a fumbling, fatherly frat boy attitude.  All three of the teens fit their personas perfectly, though Lizzie Boys looks so much like Anna Paquin, it’s impossible to not think about the resemblance every time she is onscreen.  Top name Lauren Holly doesn't turn in her strongest work as the neighbor, however.  Holly's character spends much of the movie beneath a welding mask and body armor, so it probably isn't even her for many of those minutes.

“Dead Shack” leaves plenty of room for ghoulish gore once biting time begins.  Copious black blood accompanies smashed heads and shotgun-blasted bodies for outrageous explosions that are graphic while still being comically fun.

Don’t expect a raucous riot along the lines of “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” (review here) or “Zombieland” though.  “Dead Shack” has a more casual approach to its shambling corpse comedy, which mostly comes courtesy of smirking situational dialogue that is amusing as opposed to laugh out loud hilarious.

This is where “Dead Shack” treads a lot of water without swimming strongly in its comedic current.  “Dead Shack” isn’t a lazily made effort by a long shot.  Yet there is a lackadaisical energy on the humor half in need of more zomberrific zip.

The movie isn’t mistuned so much as not necessarily tuned at all.  Characters present many of their quips straight, and get good gags out of general goofiness.  Affable acting just doesn’t see much support from the film’s tone or timing, which strangely sticks to a subdued stride.

One sore thumb standout is an electronic soundtrack from indie duo Humans, one half of which is “Dead Shack” director Peter Ricq.  Synth scores are a resurging rage in genre entertainment, but they fit best in films like “The Void” (review here) or “The Mind’s Eye” (review here), where John Carpenter tones are in play elsewhere onscreen.  “Dead Shack” doesn’t fill that bill, so its restrained strains slow down the film’s rhythm through sound.

Several of the heart-to-heart throughlines aren’t seen all the way through either.  Jason’s crush on Summer has legs for a few setups in act one, then vanishes into unresolved irrelevance once the dead walk.  A mid-movie monologue about Colin's personal woes at home also runs into a wall.  In addition to being plugged into an odd interlude, this thread dangles until a climax where its emotional resonance misses the intended mark.

"Dead Shack" has the DNA to be a funnier, and more frightful, film than it is.  Each element simply seems to be working from slightly different style scripts.  Caught in a middle zone that doesn't quite master any of the trades tried, the movie makes more for average entertainment than for a zomcom classic.

Review Score:  60

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