YUMMY (2019)

Studio:      Shudder
Director:    Lars Damoiseaux
Writer:      Eveline Hagenbeek, Lars Damoiseaux
Producer:  Hendrix Verthe, Kobe Van Steenberghe
Stars:     Maaike Neuville, Bart Hollanders, Benjamin Ramon, Clara Cleymans

Review Score:

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Summary:

A trio’s trip to obtain plastic surgery at a remote medical facility uncovers a secret experiment that triggers a zombie outbreak.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Sheepish medical school dropout Michael accompanies his insecure girlfriend Alison, who wants a breast reduction procedure, and Alison’s narcissistic mother Sylvia, who wants a facelift, to Klinika Krawczyk, a remote medical facility specializing in plastic surgery. In addition to Dr. K. and his casual surgeon Yonah, the trio meets facility administrator Janja and her drug-addicted staffer Daniel. Other patients at the clinic include celebrity singer William Schultz, who is secretly undergoing a penis enlargement, and a woman named Oksana.

Michael struggles with getting up the nerve to propose to Alison. Daniel asserts his own arrogance and exploits Michael’s lack of confidence by being openly suggestive around Alison.

Michael questions the facility’s seemingly lax safety protocols. To distract him, Daniel takes Michael on a building tour. While Daniel sneaks away to steal drugs, Michael finds a muzzled woman restrained to a table in a hidden room. Michael removes the muzzle to discover the woman is a zombie. Michael and Daniel flee. The woman chews through her restraints and escapes.

Michael interrupts Alison’s surgery to frantically insist they need to leave immediately. Hospital staff and patients begin evacuating as the escaped woman causes a violent zombie outbreak that spreads rapidly throughout the building.

Michael suffers a bloody head injury when a transformed doctor attacks him and Alison. Presuming Michael to be dead, Alison leaves him to search for her mother.

Alison finds Sylvia still unconscious from her surgery. Unable to wake her up, Alison moves Sylvia’s entire hospital bed. A reanimated torso hungrily crawls after the women and bites Sylvia. Daniel comes to the rescue by beating the torso to death with a fire extinguisher.

William and Oksana have sex while hiding in the kitchen. A mishap sets fire to William’s enhanced penis, which then falls off after Oksana blasts it with a fire extinguisher. William bursts into the hallway to desperately search for a doctor. Zombies tear William apart.

Michael recovers. After dizzily staggering through the bloody carnage littering the hallways, Michael finds a secret experiment room where he encounters a small toad-like creature.

Michael holes up with Dr. K. and Janja. The three of them eventually unite with Alison, Sylvia, and Daniel. Alison is excited to see Michael didn’t die after all.

With Sylvia starting to transform, Dr. K. tries creating an antidote. Dr. K. admits he was secretly experimenting with stem cells to create an anti-aging enzyme and inadvertently created the zombie virus. Michael and Daniel exchange a knowing look when Dr. K. wonders how Patient Zero escaped confinement. Janja murders Dr. K. with an ax to keep him from continuing, although she justifies his death by claiming it was a precaution against transformation since Sylvia vomited blood all over him.

Sylvia bites Yonah’s arm when he tries administering an injection. Yonah painfully amputates himself by destroying his arm in a document shredder.

Michael is too cowardly to euthanize Sylvia once she fully transforms into a zombie. Alison takes the ax and kills Sylvia herself. With Alison now resentful toward Michael, Daniel uses the opportunity to comfort her.

The five remaining survivors flee to the roof. Alison, Daniel, Janja, and Michael cross over to the neighboring building, but Yonah falls and dies.

The four survivors descend down a trash chute. Daniel tries blackmailing Janja for money to keep quiet about the secret experiment she was involved in. Janja tricks Daniel into getting bitten by a zombie. Daniel kills Janja, but tells the others that a zombie was responsible.

Michael and Alison rescue Oksana from zombies. Oksana runs outside before everyone else only to be gunned down by a military blockade.

Tear gas forces Michael, Alison, and Daniel to retreat to an underground tunnel to look for another way out. Michael finally proposes to Alison, but she insultingly dismisses him.

Alison opens a manhole, but a military truck parks on top of the metal cover to prevent her from escaping. Alison becomes pinned in place when the manhole cover crushes her hand. Michael saws off Alison’s fingers so she can get free. Alison has a change of heart as she and Michael profess their love for each other.

The trio finds another manhole leading to the surface. Michael stays underground to hoist up Alison and Daniel. Michael kills zombie William to use his intestines as rope. However, Daniel refuses to help Michael from above. Michael sees Daniel’s bite wound as Daniel shuts the manhole cover.

Alison and Daniel escape in a car. Alison notices Daniel is infected. Alison stabs Daniel with a screwdriver when he tries to rape her. Daniel falls out of the car. Alison uses the vehicle to smash Daniel against a concrete barrier.

Overwhelmed by zombies underground, Michael uses a makeshift bomb he created earlier to blow up the horde. The explosion causes several zombies to break through to the surface. Michael survives the blast and climbs above ground.

Michael staggers into the road. Thinking he is a zombie, Alison runs over Michael. Alison realizes her mistake just before smashing her car into a tree. Michael and Alison both die.

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Review:

Over the years, I’ve seen a number of indie horror critics “retire” or let self-owned sites lapse into 404 errors. Prior to winding down, some of these writers posted explanations echoing a common sentiment. After reviewing a countless number of redundant movies that blandly blurred together in disinterested memory banks, their passion for writing about fright films diminished due to a fear of repeating one’s self.

In other words, they didn’t just feel like they were watching the same things over and over again. They felt like they were repeatedly rewriting the same review too.

“Yummy” causes me to consider I might be approaching a similar point, if I’m not already there. It’s not that I didn’t like “Yummy.” For the most part, I’d say I enjoyed it no less or no more than any midrange horror film. It’s certainly not poorly made. Money makes its way onscreen in the form of lush lighting, quick-fire editing, plentiful practical effects, and expansive settings.

The issue is I can’t connect to the film in any resonant way that inspires insightful or even entertaining analysis. I’m not sure how many different ways I can articulate shrugging shoulders into a sentence other than, “It’s fine, I guess.” Seems like it would be more efficient to repurpose a review from any other undead film from the previous seven years. Or just say, “’Yummy’ is an okay zombie flick” and call it a day, since I only appear able to talk about it in tamely descriptive terms.

The story sort of centers on quiet nebbish Michael. Michael’s girlfriend Alison probably identified with his insecurity. She has been hiding from rude leers, gawks, and jokes about her big breasts for years. Now she’s on her way to a private medical facility in a remote corner of Europe for a procedure to chisel her chest to a smaller size.

Michael only comes along for the ride. But Alison’s materialistic mother Sylvia, who can’t stand Michael, wants to freshen her already tight face with another lift. Sylvia’s demeaning disapproval is exactly what Michael doesn’t need as he struggles to get up the nerve to propose. He also doesn’t need the hospital’s resident gigolo Daniel arrogantly hitting on Alison, but Michael has to deal with that too.

Those problems pale in comparison to what happens after Michael inadvertently releases a woman seemingly held hostage in a hidden room in the building’s basement. She’s actually a secret experiment’s Patient Zero and turning her loose turns the hospital into a gore-filled warzone.

First things first regarding that gore. I’ve seen more than one person who saw “Yummy” at a 2019 screening lament that kills occur offscreen and the FX don’t go as over-the-top into Peter Jackson insanity as they should. Those folks either saw a heavily edited version of the film or else have an astronomical standard for blood and guts no common person can comprehend.

“Yummy” is as goopy as all get out. Unforgettable sequences include a paper shredder used to amputate an arm, a reanimated torso leaving an intestine trail as it pendulums furiously forward on two hands, and an out-of-nowhere little creature that looks like something Tom Savini might have made if Jim Henson asked him to design a fraggle. Everything, and I mean everything, is then covered in barrels of chunky blood, viscera, and sometimes vomit. If “Yummy” isn’t delightfully disgusting enough for you, you’ve got issues.

You might be able to tell from those descriptions that “Yummy” streaks itself with some silliness. It’s not an out-loud laugh riot type of comedy though. It’s almost like what scattered humor there is only exists so the explosive violence doesn’t seem so seriously extreme. Almost all gags qualify as lowbrow too, so plan on butting up against recurring bits about Alison’s big breasts as well as a haywire penis enlargement that leads to an incredible amount of painful testicular trauma.

Brief blips of bonkers brilliance indicate “Yummy” could have gone so much further. Specifically, the diminutive toad creature that’s never explained and the shredded arm that’s basically a live-action cartoon suggest “Yummy” only scrapes the surface of irreverent inventiveness. Maybe that’s why the movie ends up being middling instead of outstanding.

Characterizations get what they can from performances that aren’t asked to do a whole lot. Plotlines also don’t have much going for them by way of intrigue. For instance, Daniel has a drug addiction that’s neither here nor there. He just complicates Michael and Alison’s romance in a way that’s weird for a movie whose tone oddly ends up leaning more towards dramatic than comedic.

It’s the writing that needs to provide everyone and everything with more pop. The script isn’t a dull disappointment or anything. Yet too often the story coasts on clichés like struggling with euthanizing an infected loved one, a bitten person hiding his wound, and other setups that have been standard since “Night of the Living Dead.” “Yummy” doesn’t come across like a completely pointless movie made entirely of recycled materials. But with that much familiarity floating in the air, “Yummy” could use a sharper knife to cut out its own unique niche.

Is it overall malaise or merely this one movie that explains why I don’t have a stronger reaction one way or the other? I’m not sure. I do know it took me nearly twice the runtime to make it through “Yummy” because of frequent pauses when I tuned out to indistinguishable instances of undead violence. Since I can’t totally tell what my personal opinion is, it seems three out of five stars is the fairest sticker to slap on the review score. That essentially says, “It’s fine, I guess,” right?

Review Score: 60

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