In the not-so-distant future, the undead threaten to outnumber the living since no one dies anymore and the dead have been resurrected. Three small-time crooks, Karl Neard (Alexandre Nachi), his half-sister Maggie (Megan Peta Hill) and his best friend Freddy Mercks (Derek Johns), who is vainly courting the latter, get into the zombie trade.
To this end, they intercept zombies destined for the pharmaceutical company run by Bob Coleman (Guy Nadon, who has a field day as a dark villain). When Coleman’s delivery men Stanley (Patrick Abellard), Maggie’s ex, and Rocco (Marc-André Boulanger) realize this, they kidnap Karl’s grandmother (charming Clare Coulter), who believes herself to be undead.
We Are Zombies (We the zombies in French), the third feature film by the RKSS trio, formed by Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell and François Simard, transports viewers into a world where zombies, called non-living, are not dangerous like those encountered in the films of George Romero and his imitators.
In fact, these zombies might even have a little tender side like the one Nicholas Hoult played in Warm Bodiesby Jonathan Levine. However, although we meet a charming “zilf” (we’ll let you guess what that means), Zelvirella (Rosemarie Sabor), We Are Zombies does not indulge in sentimentality. In fact, it fits perfectly into the lineage of RKSS’s previous films. Thus, we find the offbeat humor and the dystopian aspect of Turbo Kid (2015) and the desire to respect the codes of horror cinema, of which the trio is fond, Summer of 84 (2018).
Winner of the Audience Award – Gold last year at Fantasia, where it was the closing film, We Are Zombies is a fairly faithful adaptation of the comic book series The Zombies That Ate the World (Les Humanoïdes associés), by Belgian screenwriter Jerry Frissen and American illustrator Guy Davis. The latter also contributed, to the great delight of the directors, to the creation of the impressive creature and highlight of the show Otto Maddox (Stéphane Demers, crazy), who collects zombies to make works of art.
By appropriating the work of Frissen and Davis, the three writer-directors have injected their own anxieties about the future of the world. Behind their schoolboy humor and their appetite for grand-guignolesque scenes (there’s no shortage of hemoglobin and viscera!), which evoke a version DIY of Shaun of the Deadby Edgar Wright, highlights a reflection on the protection of the environment and on the advancement of science.
Featuring zombies treated as an inferior caste, the trio also reflects an unflattering mirror of a society that turns its back on the elderly, the homeless and other marginalized groups. Have the Roadkill Superstars calmed down? Sure, but they still know how to have fun and entertain us.
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Horror comedy
We Are Zombies (VF: We, the zombies)
RKSS
With Alexandre Nachi, Derek Johns, Megan Peta Hill
1 h 20