Quick Movie Review: Zombies: Wicked Little Things

3/10

The story is, a mum and her two daughters move to a creepy old house because they are broke after the death of the kids' dad - and he left them the home in the will.

There are lots of problems with this movie, but I won't waste your time making you read all of them - I'll stick to the highlights.

First of all, it is not a "zombie movie" per se. Of course, it concerns the return of some dead, wronged children from a mine shaft where they were left to die by a very bad person many years before, but they don't really follow any of the traditions or conventions of the Zombie movie (they talk, for example, as well as carrying weapons...)

Second, while all the acting is, to put it nicely, reasonable, no characters are likable or sympathetic - the mother is a terrible parent, leaving her young daughter alone for long periods only to be surprised when she is not there any more when she returns home - this happens at least three times. The youngest daughter is close to sympathetic, but is barely present, presumably due to school commitments (a high budget is not one of the film makers problems) so we get very little - the older daughter is as hackneyed an older teen as you could imagine, concerned with coolness, boys and a bit of reefer (guaranteed death to anyone caught smoking it and enjoying it, btw). Yawn.

Characters are introduced and killed off just as fast, the "zombies"' make up makes them resemble nothing as much as depressed Clowns and there is absolutely, definitively, no depth.

In fact, the only reasonably effective sequence is at the very end, where the bad man gets his comeuppance (actually it's the bad man's grandson or something - bad luck, Junior!) and our leads get drenched in his blood from the loft where he's hiding. No - it's not that good a sequence, but I'm clutching at straws.

The real tragedy is, unlike The Strangers or Alone In The Dark, it is just not a film worthy of a hideously negative review - it is too well made to be mocked or entertaining through sheer incompetence, but too bad to enjoy.

There is no reason to see this, so don't. I don't know how much clearer your faithful reviewer can be.

A