ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009)

Sometimes you can tell whether a movie is going to be good just from the opening title sequence. This is particularly true with low-budget zombie movies. There are exceptions, however, and director Kevin Hamedani's ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction is one of them.

See, the opening title sequence of the movie is really, really good. It shows a zombie wash up on the island town of Port Gamble only to be discovered by a blind person, thereby economically explaining the zombie problem the movie will face later on. While the rest of the movie isn't bad, it just isn't at the same quality as the opening title sequence. It's almost as if they spent a good amount of time shooting the title sequence, then ran ragged trying to finish the rest, thereby dampening the image quality.

As for the plot of the movie, the story is fractured: there's Frida (Janette Armand) who's an Iranian-American girl home from Princeton and must deal with the ignorance that the island folk have for her race (they think she's from Iraq when she's from Iran) as well as the traditions imposed on her by her father Ali (Ali Hamedani), while gay couple Tom (Doug Fahl) and Lance (Cooper Hopkins) are in town to tell Tom's mother that he is gay. The disparate trio are thrust together when zombies take over the town, and must work together to, you know, survive.

With the subtitle "a political zomedy" entering the proceedings during the credits, and the social issues brought up by the main characters, writer/director Kevin Hamedani obviously has an agenda with his movie. For this, we congratulate him. While Hamedani's commentary is not subtle in any way, it also doesn't try to hit you over the head with it, and he does infuse the movie with some legitimately funny moments (particularly during the scene where Tom and Lance try to come out to Tom's mother, who is slowly turning into a zombie). You have to admire how ambitious Hamedani is, sneaking both a social and political message into a zombie movie that is also trying to be funny.

Quite frankly, not many zombie comedies work well, and Shaun of the Dead clearly set a high standard. Not all of Hamedani's jokes work, but enough of them do to make ZMD an enjoyable movie.

And boy, that opening sequence. I really built that up. Now we'll get emails and comments that the opening sequence isn't as great as I make it out to be. That's fine, as long as you watch Hamedani's movie. The fact that it's worth watching almost makes it incredible that ZMD is part of the annual "8 Films to Die For" schlockfest, which is usually around 2 or 3 out of 8 watchable movies.