Slow Zombies

I have told you that Ms. Spenser likes scary movies, and I don't. One of the ways I've been compromising is with horror-comedy, but I just realized something: they don't count. That is, she doesn't mind horror-comedies, but considers them comedies, not horror movies. Still, if they are good, she still likes them as comedies. Thus, Cockneys vs Zombies (2012).

It starts on a construction site, where workers find a vault sealed by Charles II in 1661. It's full of skeletons, and one of them bites a workers, starting a zombie infestation. But we are really interested in Rasmus Hardiker and Harry Treadway, two cockney youths who plan to rob a bank. They need the money so that their granddad's old age home won't be demolished. We meet his granddad, played by Alan Ford, looking and sounding very Michael Caine, his sort-of girlfriend Honor Blackman, and the whole crew, gathered round the piano singing "Knees Up Mother Brown". They are a rowdy, feisty lot.

Meanwhile, Hardiker and Treadaway pick up the other gang members: Their cousin Michelle Ryan, a not-very bright security expert and convicted thief played by Jack Doolan, and Mental Mickey (Ashley Thomas), a heavily armed Iraq war vet with anger management issues and a plate in his head. 

They dress in construction worker outfits and enter the bank, where the manager assumes they are part of a pickup for the money the construction company. She's about to hand over a million pounds, but gets suspicious, so Mental Mickey hauls out a gun and takes her and another banker hostage. 

But when they leave the bank, they find desolation - OK, it's East London, so maybe it always looks like that. But there are zombies wandering around, so our friends need to get out fast. They bring the hostages to a warehouse, but there are zombies everywhere. They are slow and stupid, but there are a lot of them. Mickey gets bit, but he still wants to hold onto the hostages.

And now the zombies are menacing the old folks. Alan Ford is pretty tough - he fought in WWII. But they aren't armed, and most of them are only partially ambulatory. Will they hold out until the kids get it together?

And so on. This is a fun movie, not hilarious, but cute - sort of like Juan of the Dead. Plus one of the old geezers keeps using cockney rhyming slang that none of the other cockneys have ever heard. So, even though I can't count it as a horror movie, Ms. Spenser was happy with the choice.