Christmas With the Dead, 2012

A strange electrical storm on Christmas Eve kills off most of the town, (including the wife and daughter of local radio station manager, Calvin. Calvin only survived because he was napping through it!

Death, unfortunately, is fleeting and wife, Ella, and little Tina are back up and walking around like the rest of the recently deceased in no time. Only now, they are flesh-nibbling zombies!

Six months go by and Calvin keeps his dead missus on a chain and feeds her dogfood, optimistic for her return to normalcy. He spends his days running errands like getting gasoline for his generator, and retrieving food from his stockpile down at the radio station. He meets G.M., another survivor who shows him how the undead respond to music. Seeing this, Calvin believes that they still retain some humanity, and decides to fulfill his promise to his now dead family to provide the perfect Christmas. In June.

And then things get weird when the duo is abducted by a religious cult who escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane. Because, of course.

Unfortunately for me, the characters weren’t overly engaging. Calvin was just a ‘plug-and-play’ person, no real personality. G.M., a bit more likable, but hardly what I’d call relatable or root-for-able. For me, as a viewer, the lack of engagement in the protagonists diminishes the fear of their plight. 

The zombies weren’t too bad. Oh, sure their make-up was inconsistent, and the overactors portraying the dead were really jerking them corpses around, but aside from growling, and little electrical sparkles in their eyes, they were mostly Romero-types. They were just the recently dead, they were shambolic in movement, (SO shambolic!) They ate the living’s flesh and transferred Zombism through bites. Also, they were killed with headshots. So, at least some faithfulness to canon. Due to this, I will overlook the weird little addition of occasional electrical eye flicker.

The zombies weren’t the only ones troubled by bad acting. Almost all of the cast, living and dead, weren’t very convincing. But this might have been a good thing, because the dialog wouldn’t have rung true on good actor portrayals. And some of the ‘criminally insane’ characters’ ‘acting’ was literally cringeworthy. I cringed. 

From the start, Christmas With The Dead really played out like low budget project, although in fairness, the image clarity was pretty good. Also, I appreciated the lack of the ‘shaky cam’ technique - So overdone. But the story dragged. I think there were supposed to be funny parts, because the front of the DVD case had a quote calling it “Hilarious, scrappy, and even creepy.” I didn’t get any of that. 

True, I went in with high hopes and was disappointed, but, I used my rubric, the ZMR, for a more objective grading tool. Through its cold and calculating lens, Christmas With The Dead earned itself a 1.55 out of a possible four stars. This puts it in a below-average classification. I had never heard of this movie before recently and now I know why. I probably would have shut this off midway through, but it’s Christmas and I was hoping for a miracle. 

Here is the trailer for you to decide whether or not to see it:

CHRISTMAS WITH THE DEAD