American Zombie.

"Grace Lee's faux documentary American Zombie takes one of horror cinema's enduring subjects - the undead - and crafts an amusing media satire on our fascination with/fear of marginalized cultures," writes Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times.

Rob Humanick understands why you might be reluctant to take in another mockumentary, but he sees American Zombie as "not only among the most spot-on examples of the genre since Rob Reiner revolutionized it with This is Spinal Tap almost a quarter century ago, but [it] also [doubles] as an intelligent re-examination of its predecessors in the horror genre. For the bulk of its running time, I'd even go so far as to suggest it of near-brilliance, its failure to follow through with a consistent batting average being the only impediment to its status as something of an instant, albeit minor, zombie classic.

Updated through 4/1.

Arbogast finds it "sharp yet sweethearted media satire with more than a couple of good ideas about the human condition on both sides of the bright light. The film's salvation is the fact that director/cowriter Grace Lee is a documentary lover rather than a zombie movie lover, which keeps the piece from degrading into a string of glib homages, coy references and lame in-jokes."

"Grace Lee gives us the zombie-as-oppressed-and-invisible-minority," writes Sam Sweet in the LA Weekly. "The best zombie movies shock us into a realization about ourselves and the world in which we live, but how much can zombies teach us when their world so closely resembles 1995?"

At the Laemmle in West Hollywood.

Earlier: Reviews from Slamdance 07.

Update, 3/31: "Lee's satire is often affectionate, but in the end, she takes her gentle gloves off," writes Rob Gonsalves, who assures us that this is not just a "one-joke, one-note spoof" at Hollywood Bitchslap. "This is a horror movie, and in horror movies things suck and get worse and don't care if you feel bad about that."

Update, 4/1: Arbogast and Michael Guillén talk with Lee.

Posted by dwhudson at March 30, 2008 11:53 AM