The Wickeds

When a gang of youths break into an old house being used as a film set, they encounter far more than imaginary horrors. Boarding themselves up, their sole refuge is compromised when they let two gravediggers inside, one of whom is infected. While the living squabble indoors, the dead gather outside, intent on punishing those were wicked enough to wake them from eternal slumber.

With that overly familiar staple of cavorting and wisecracking Americans being flaunted, THE WICKEDS can't resist mocking itself from a very early stage, exemplified no better when one of the gang suggests spending the weekend at the set of a "cheesy straight-to-video horror flick." Filled with tedious dialogue, particularly the bickering between the two gravediggers, as they absurdly argue over whether or not the dead are rising from their coffins, THE WICKEDS is matched by a flat visual style and marred by a grating heavy metal soundtrack that often threatens to motivate the scenes of would-be zombie mayhem.

If the kinky teens being set up for the kill is neither nothing new nor interesting, at least they come out fighting. A pair of football hunks outrun the shambling dead and leap over tombstones in order to find some transport, and main character Richard proves adept at close quarter combat, even with the ghouls coming from all angles. We are also treated to some kinky sex, as a heavy-breasted brunette, recently turned, gives her living boyfriend a lingering blood-caked kiss. In spite of this, the zombies' heads explode and lop off all too easily, whether from a fist to the face or shovel to the neck, reducing our belief in the integrity of the action and taking the edge off its impact.

Writer David Zagorski and director John Poague evoke a wholly muddled mythology: the film's antagonists might be zombies, but one wounded character is infected because when caught in a scrape he accidentally drank some blood. This confusion of the zombie and the vampire is softened when one considers that the main villain, a well-preserved body whose coffin was raided for its ancient amulet, appears to be a straight vampire (with pasty face, and fanged front teeth, as per Reggie Nadler's Mr Barlow in Tobe Hooper's SALEM'S LOT), but the addition of a ghost that throws people from the top window takes the film to absurd, credibility-defying extremes.

While the film's stupidity prevents us from being receptive to its more serious late moments, the film does benefit some jittery, in-your-face camerawork. If the approach is undisciplined, it at least carries some visceral weight, and the picture benefits some eerie cinematography in the cramped attic as the film nears its close. For a SOV film so uncertain thematically and stylistically, it is held together by Anna Bridgforth's engaging performance as Julie. Sensible and engaging in the face of fear, she's one of the better female characters in the zombie film since Patricia Tallman's outstanding turn in Tom Savini's underrated NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake. Like her predecessor, she evokes an authentic feeling of terror, but keeps her calm while the boys bicker and the zombies munch.

Review by Matthew Sanderson