Make-Out with Violence (2008)

An action-packed slog

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

. . . with maybe a little A BOY AND HIS DOG thrown in for good measure. Just as in PETER PAN, this movie focuses on the three Darling boys, but in an incestuous twist, one of the trio is hung up on just-like-a-sister Wendy. As the littlest Darling notes in his opening voice-over, "Patrick was never ready for Wendy to be dead." So Patrick plays dress-up all summer with Wendy's occasionally-animated corpse (mostly in a friend's bathtub), while his little brother Beetlejuice falls in love with the dogs belonging to Wendy's likely killer, Rody, who is incommunicado for the season, while the other main suspect in Wendy's demise--her actual lover, Brian--has moved on to getting "sleaze comfort" from middle brother Carol and the late Wendy's mutual crush, Addy, while oldest brother Patrick--whose umbilical cord was wrapped around twin Carol's throat during delivery--is busy feeding his own second crush Rody's dogs (now beloved by Beetle) to the carnivorous Wendy before feeding himself to her at the bottom of his backyard swim pool. While Wendy may seem to be the quintessential ZOMBIE WITHOUT A CAUSE to her tribe of Lost Boys, none of the parents in MAKE OUT WITH VIOLENCE really give a hoot whether any of their children will survive the summer, since they all have important grown-ups stuff to do which monopolizes all their time and attention. Hey, this is Tennessee, where no one has heard of science, so Beetle's other interest--bugs--must be purely gastronomical.

The DVD cover for "Make-Out with Violence" had the 'the year's rom-zom-com' on it, and that is what caught my attention along with a couple of other high praise lines from various magazines and websites. And being the zombie aficionado that I am, I just had to get it and see what it was.And now having seen it, I must say that it wasn't anything at all what I had expected it to be. The movie was incredibly slow moving. That being said, then I am not saying that the movie was bad, because it was really nicely filmed and edited, plus it had a good enough storyline. I, however, had just expected something more from it and more than just one decomposing girl, zombie-wise. And the 'zombie' is more of a backdrop character to help the story along.The story in "Make-Out with Violence" is about two brothers, Patrick (played by Eric Lehning) and Carol (played by Cody DeVos) who is trying to deal with and come to terms with the loss of their close friend Wendy (played by Shellie Marie Shartzer). They happen to come across her body, as it was never found, but Wendy is now a living dead. They bring her to a house, where they try to keep her alive and have something that resemble a life.Actually, the storyline was well put together and worked out well enough, I just had a whole other expectation to what it would be. And as such, I wasn't really enjoying the movie, because it was a drama and not a horror (as the DVD cover had listed as the genre). Don't expect this movie to be a zombie fest, because it only have that one zombie in it.The people they had hired for the various roles were actually doing good jobs with their roles, and they really helped the movie to step up a notch. Most noteworthy, in my opinion, was Eric Lehning; his performance was just incredible.If you enjoy zombie movies that aren't mainstream, then "Make-Out with Violence" might just be something for you. Just bear in mind that it is a drama about the lives of the brothers and their friends and their morbid situation of having a living dead amongst them, and not being a horror zombie movie. It is a beautiful movie, to be honest, but hardly an ordinary zombie movie.

...and that's from the kid who played the little brother in this tedious emo-saturated "drama" (and I use the term loosely) that reminded me of a boring "alternative" comic book transposed to video (think Daniel Clowes only not nearly as clever or involving). I really don't mean to be mean to these people, as I'm sure they meant well, but Syd Field would have torn their script in half after about five pages, and Ted Sturgeon would have simply told them to start over after they had a real story, real actors, and a real budget. This might (and I emphasize might) have made a decent 20-minute short, but stretched to feature length it's simply stultifying. Featuring ostensible twins (the characters, not the actors) with distressingly bad haircuts and the expressiveness and appeal of a bag of rocks (the femme leads totally outclass all the men in this poor thing), and a soundtrack guaranteed to make you switch your allegiance to heavy metal, rap, or even classical music just to rid your system of any trace of unadulterated wimp, this forgettable indie has little, if anything, to say, and very little to show. There are a handful of interesting camera shots, sporadic passable acting (again, pretty much all from the ladies), and precious little else; there's simply nothing to latch onto to hold any interest beyond the fascination of watching a wreck unfold before your disbelieving eyes. A sad squandering of my time, sorry to say, and a bit of my public library's limited resources. Word to the wise, pass this one up and remain lucky to never know what you missed. I'm going to have to go track down "Deadgirl" now, having read the other comments on this board. Surely it's better than this badly titled yawner.

Unlike Deadgirl, which was released around the same time, this movie struck me as pretentious nonsense that exists only to showcase the indie cred of all involved. There wasn't anything really *wrong* with it, per se, but I found myself constantly rolling my eyes and sighing heavily. Most of the scenes are melodramatic, though the acting is decent enough. None of the characters ever seem to express any strong emotions, though I suppose that's probably the fault of the writers/directors than the actors. Speaking of the writing, it was pretty mediocre. I've seen much, much worse, but with the pretentiousness of the directing, I was really expecting something a bit deeper. The soundtrack seems to be a major part of the experience, and I'm sure that if you're one of those hipsters who can't get enough of pretentious, derivative pop music, you'll love it to death. Unfortunately, I don't think I was in the target demographic for this movie. Some movies can transcend their genre and target demographic, like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (spaghetti western), The Shining (horror), and The Godfather (crime drama). That requires good directing and writing, however, and this movie simply can't rise above the silly pretensions of the Smeagol brothers (or whatever). If you're into this sort of thing (pretentious "indie" movies), you'll probably love it, but I was overcome by boredom and annoyance.