If
a stoner rises from the dead as a zombie, would anyone notice the
difference? Two slackers try to carry on
as usual when one suddenly finds himself undead and rather parched, but the
constant proximity with death has serious repercussions in D. Kerry Prior’s
meathead buddy horror mash-up, The
Revenant (trailer
here), which
opens today in New York.
Bart
Gregory would like to think he shipped off to Iraq for idealistic reasons, but
the truth is he was trying to avoid making a commitment to his longtime
girlfriend Janet. Thanks to a rather
murky ambush, he won’t have to. It would
seem Gregory is dead as a doornail, but he is actually undead. Staggering out of his grave and into his
loser best friend Joey Leubner’s crash pad, Gregory struggles to come to terms
with his new existence as a “revenant.”
He can no longer keep down solid food, but it seems vast quantities of
pot and booze are A-OK. For sustenance
though, he will need human blood.
No
problem—this is Los Angeles. There is an
unlimited supply of violent low lives in need of killing. Suddenly, the boys are vigilante media
sensations. Unfortunately, Gregory and
Leubner are really sloppy about their hunting practices, leading to all kinds
of bad karma—and of course, gore.
Though
it opens in Iraq, Prior largely resists the urge to pontificate on current
events. These are not allegorical
zombies. That’s the good news. However, The
Revenant really does not have any ideas to take the place of didactic
soap-boxing. Prior offers several scenes
of truly inspired gross-out humor, but the in-between periods are rather slack
and dreary.
Still,
David Anders plugs away admirably as the nice guy walking dead, keeping viewers
somewhat invested in the grisly story. On
the other hand, before it is over, the audience will be ready to rise up collectively,
like pitchfork wielding peasants, to put a stake through the heart of Chris
Wylde’s annoying as all get-out Leubner.
