Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse

Ben (Tye Sheridan) is a Nice Guy torn between his two best friends – Augie (Joey Morgan), a scouting enthusiast trapped in pre-pubescence, and Carter (Logan Miller), a loathsome little weed obsessed with getting laid. They’re forced to grow up just that little bit faster when faced with a full-blown end-of-the-world scenario, and the dead come to life.

All of this mind-boggling originality comes from writer/director Christopher Landon, whose achievements to date including writing four of the Paranormal Activity films, directing one (The Marked Ones), and penning Shia LaBeouf snoozer Disturbia.

You know the landscape: both the teenage boy coming-of-age tale and the zombie genre are now stock-standard, and more drenched in cliché than blood and/or semen. And of course the gross-out aesthetic of both makes them perfectly matched. Right?

But this is not a gross-out kind of film. It’s not shocking, it doesn’t make you squirm, and it doesn’t even revel in embarrassment like its peers. It just loves exploiting women. Zombie strippers? Why not have one of them do a striptease? Big-breasted zombie cop? Why not have her shirt ripped off so that our intrepid heroes can feel her up? Why not call the old lady a bitch before killing her? Or – wait for it – throw in some undead cunnilingus?

One could make a convincing argument about the dehumanisation that is part and parcel of zombie films. When stripped of its humanity, the body is devalued and objectified so that we can make it a site of violence guilt-free. The female body in this film is a thing to be toyed with. But tell that to Landon and he’ll laugh until he throws up money.

Are you into zombies? Hungry for a laugh? Keen on coming-of-age flicks? Watch the far superior Zombieland. Or you could go straight to the films that Scouts Guide directly rips off – Braindead, Shaun Of The Dead and Re-Animator, to name but a few. And don’t think that Landon is paying homage, because there’s no love for genre, and no nudge-nudge-wink-wink afoot. Just grounds for copyright infringement.

Two jokes land in the film, and both are gore-related. This is not a compliment for a film marketed as a comedy. In fact, this is not a film. This is a cum-encrusted sock that you are paying to have draped across your eyes. Appropriate, really, because if you have any genuine desire to see this movie, you can get fucked.

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.

Subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine

Subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine