Wasting Away | 2007
"Wasting Away" (or "Aaah! Zombies!!") is a 2007 zombie comedy film directed by Matthew Kohen, featuring Matthew Davis, Julianna Robinson, and Michael Grant Terry. The events of the film unfold from the perspective of zombies. The film portrays zombies as seeing themselves as normal humans, occasionally using black-and-white footage to show the perspective of normal humans towards zombies.
In a military experiment, a soldier is injected with serum XT1258, but he turns into a zombie and attacks the surgeons. The remaining serum is transported for disposal, but the soldiers get lost and accidentally hit someone following them while fighting over a map. One of the barrels containing the serum falls off, contaminating ice cream behind a bowling arcade. An employee named Tim eats the ice cream with his friends Mike, his crush Cindy, and Mike's ex-girlfriend Vanessa, and they all faint and turn into zombies. However, they still see themselves as humans. Cindy feels a stomach ache, and Vanessa and Tim cannot call an ambulance because the operator speaks too quickly and hangs up – everything in the normal world seems fast to zombies – but they simply think the connection was bad.
They go outside to seek help and encounter a soldier named Nick. Nick joins them to find a working phone. They enter a bar and are attacked by patrons, who exhibit abnormal symptoms, such as increased strength and endurance. Nick talks about the serum and reveals that he has also been exposed. He suspects that most of the population is infected and that the five of them are immune because they consumed dairy products. Nick, convinced that the military will track them to cover up the incident, suggests that it is safer for them to stick together.
Nick spies on Colonel South and Dr. Richter but fails and goes to steal information about the serum. Cindy and Tim go to check on Cindy's family, while Vanessa and Mike hurry for Vanessa's job interview. During a moment when Tim seeks permission from Cindy's parents, they accidentally kill them when they throw dynamite. Vanessa scares her employer into hiding in his bedroom, killing him. Meanwhile, Nick is captured and has his brainwaves accelerated to understand humans. Colonel South reveals that the military plans to eliminate infected individuals, and Nick shows his zombie form. Enraged, Nick escapes.
Tim, Cindy, Mike, and Vanessa reunite at the bowling arcade, but they are challenged to a bowling match by Tim's rival Danny and his team. Only drunk people see zombies as humans. Mike and Tim compete against them, while Cindy and Vanessa intoxicate them to create confusion. Everything goes well until they run out of beer, and Danny's team realizes they are real zombies. A fight breaks out, and Mike gets decapitated in the chaos, but his head remains alive. Nick appears to help them and takes down Danny and his team.
Afterward, Nick devises a plan to defeat the military by infecting most of the soldiers. They resurrect the bowling team members who died with contaminated ice cream and disguise themselves as corpses in a waste truck heading to headquarters. They nearly get caught by Colonel South's quarantine unit, but Mike activates a grenade with his mouth, sacrificing himself to kill them. When the zombies arrive at headquarters, Nick offers himself as a sacrifice while the other zombies infect the remaining soldiers. An enraged Colonel South captures Nick.
Tim, Cindy, Vanessa, and other zombies live in a "Zombie Town" established to honor Mike and Nick. Colonel South and Dr. Richter plan to torture Nick for treason as a soldier, but Nick responds, "I am not a soldier. I am a zombie."
Dennis Harvey wrote in Variety that while zombie comedies are old, this film is "fun and engaging." Allan Hunter praised it in Screen Daily as "a creative and well-acted delightful work by Matthew Kohen, full of cult potential." J.C. De Leon noted in Brutal as Hell that the film has "funny comedic moments," but focuses too much on silly humor rather than horror.
Jodie Bass stated in Beyond Hollywood that "this film is truly destined to become a cult classic, and it deserves to." Michael Rubino wrote in DVD Verdict that the film has great whimsy but fails to deliver due to budget constraints. Peter Dendle remarked in The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, Volume 2 that "while quite risk-averse, Aaah! Zombies!! satisfactorily pursues a conceptually innovative angle in detail."
