Stalled
While clearly referring that the films main protagonist spends most of his time trapped in a washroom stall trying not to get eaten by zombies, it also explains the tone of the movie from the outset perfectly. Incredibly laboured, staggeringly unfunny, ludicrously implausible, and with the film’s few speaking roles given to inherently terribly human beings, there’s almost not a single thing to like about this British import that’s all concept and no nuance or craft.
Writer and star Dan Palmer plays W.C. (haha), a maintenance worker who on Christmas Eve decides to steal a bunch of money from the white collar office complex that fired him. He ducks into the ladies loo to lay low, but a never explained zombie outbreak forces him to stay on the crapper – with a fellow unseen female survivor a couple stalls over he keeps flirting with – and think of a way of getting around the hordes of bizarre looking zombies (security guard, biker, Santa, bikini girls, businessmen, Jesus).
Not a single word of Palmers script is funny or cute, but is it ever working overtime trying to be. The dialogue is white noise coming from a character so reprehensible and boring that one wishes the film were the short it would have probably worked better as. The ways that director Christian James finds to actually keep him on the toilet are groan inducing. Things get so desperate for laughs that at one point W.C. drops some MDMA and has a trippy dream that he’s dancing through the halls with zombies in a perfect example of something that could be funny, but the film has zero idea how to shoot.
Also, a late film attempt to do something warm and fuzzy is shallow and insulting considering the fact that its only there to respond to the film’s fat shaming of another character, but it actually finds a way to make things worse.
Screens
Saturday, October 19th, 7:00pm, Scotiabank Theatre
