Rodman Flender (Idle Hands, ‘Scream: The TV Series’) brought Gunpowder & Sky, ALTER, DIGA Studios, and Full Fathom Five’s zombie rom-com Eat, Brains, Love to viewers digitally on Valentine’s day. The flick, based on the novel of the same name by Jeff Hart, follows stoner loser Jake, and cheerleader captain Amanda after they become zombies and are on the run from a government organization that uses Psychics to find and kill Zombies. The problem is, one of the best psychics in the organization is falling in love with Jake. There are spoilers ahead but if you just want my final thought you can scroll down to the end.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The film is told through narration by Jake (Jake Cannavale) and the psychic teenage government worker Cass (Sarah Yarkin) which at times also doubles as an inner monologue. Jake contracts a zombie virus, which in the film is sexually transmitted, and changes into a zombie in a crowded cafeteria; he’s not the only one as his crush Amanda (Angelique Rivera) is one as well. Jake and Amanda become “human” at least in appearance once they have fed but when they get hungry they turn back into zombies.
Cass, being part of the investigative team looking for Jake and Amanda, sees through her psychic visions Jake’s thoughts and past/present events. This starts a conflict for Cass as she notices that Jake does not act like other zombies where he’s still himself mentally while in zombie form, and seeing/hearing his antics she sees him as someone who she would hang out with in school since she is around Jake’s age, which leads to my first gripe about this film.
The casting. Though good, it just shows that this is an indie casting job as the characters, who are supposed to be high schoolers, are clearly played by adults, while a bigger budget film would most likely cast younger-looking adults to play the roles, as I said this is clearly indie but it would have been more believable if they said these were college students or something.
After staying with a zombie lesbian couple (yes you read that right.) who tell Jake and Amanda what they are now and how to live their new life, the two teens go on a “road trip” which supposedly is the main story arch of the film but it’s more of an afterthought. Part of the film’s description is “they search for a cure, all while weighing up the existential question of who really deserves to be eaten alive.”, the last part about who they eat, it was an extremely brief discussion between Jake and Amanda before they have a montage of them eating people who are bad without a care in the world, even taking road rage to the next level by eating a guy that’s tailgating them.
As this is going on we learn that the head of this government agency that tracks down and kills zombies really wants to control zombies by forming a psychic connection with them and have them do his bidding. This seems to be more of a major plot than the whole road trip learning what it means to be alive and right and wrong plot hole we’re told we would be seeing.
Towards the end of the film, Jake and Amanda “fall in love” and Cass joins them in finding a cure and right away we see that this is a set up for an awkward love triangle that starts towards the end of the story and puts Jake in the middle of it and gives a middle finger to the audience. The love triangle awkwardness reaches its peak when the trio meets the girl who Jake contracted the zombie virus from as she appears to be a leader of a band of marauding zombies all the while Amanda and Cass demand to know who she is and why she knows him…awkward.
END OF SPOILERS!
This film surprisingly is entertaining. Some of the dialogue Jake has is funny, the pace keeps moving so there’s never a dull moment, the use of CGI is extremely limited so good old fashion practical special effects win big, BUT there are some aspects of the film that can’t go unpunished.
The two main characters, Jake and Amanda, are supposed to “fall in love” as the title and description of the film is supposed to make us believe but it’s more like fall in lust as they come across more like friends with benefits. At the beginning of the film we already know we’re going to see a love triangle but the film flips us off by implying this at the end of the film.
The road trip part of the film does not exist as it’s more like filler. They claim that the film would follow Jake and Amanda’s difficult choices about who they will and will not kill and eat but we see them happily kill and eat people, even though they’re eating criminals.
The story overall is meh at best as we don’t see any character development. If the story focused more on the “Psychic Agents hunting Zombies covertly in America” angle, this would possibly be a unique zombie flick but it’s more of a stoner/sex comedy film that was a dime a dozen back in the late 90’s early 2000’s, in fact, I feel this movie is more fitting for that time.
I don’t know much about Jeff Hart’s book Eat, Brains, Love to make a comparison between that and this film rendition of it, but I hope it has more of a road trip love triangle premise in it.
With that said, though there were some issues with the story and execution, the film was fun to watch and some of the comedy in it did get a chuckle out of me a few times and the acting was pretty good too. The special effects were nice and the soundtrack fits the film’s style.
Viewers of Eat, Brains, Love will leave the table satisfied with this meal but it depends on the individual if they want to go back for seconds. On my scale of five stars, it’s a three.
You can watch Eat, Brains, Love now on iTunes, Amazon, FandangoNOW, Google Play, Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation, Vudu, and Redbox
