Zombinladen: The Axis of Evil Dead (2011) Reviews

• Tasteless and unfunny short that must have sounded really good when they planned it in the pub

  bob the moo2014-02-18

  In 2011 the US Government announced to the world that they had killed Osama Bin Laden, the most terrifying terrorist in history. They threw his body somewhere in the Atlantic ocean but in this trailer for the upcoming feature film, a young French couple find something while out scuba-diving – something terrible that has returned. I didn't expect too much from this short film because it really did seem that the title was the joke, but hopefully something relevant and funny could be done with it. Sadly the makers really haven't done too much more than laugh at the pitch ("hey guys, what if Bin Laden came back in a zombie movie?") and haven't developed it into good jokes. As a result this fake trailer really relies on excessive gore and the "oh look at Osama" factor to do the job, which unfortunately it doesn't do. As a fake trailer it should at least work in the same sort of trashy cool way that the trailers for Snakes on a Plane, Sharknado etc work, but it doesn't. Instead the gore is off-putting and the low budget delivery distracts. The joke about using ham to defeat him, or a character reading "Islam for Dummies" is about the height of it and these aren't funny – or at least they weren't until we see an even lower point where an old man in a bikini acts as bait for Osama because he is the only virgin they could find. The gore is just gory for the sake of it – there is no other reason for seeing a kitten put into a blender and generally the idea doesn't work. As a fake trailer I did really like the final shot of the fleet of ships in the background as Zombinladen is in the foreground, that was a cool shot, but otherwise there is nothing here but a "sounded funny at the time" idea that really doesn't go anywhere clever or funny.