Summary
Denise and Danny, a slightly irritating pair of hipster newlyweds, are spending their honeymoon at a borrowed beach house with plans to surf, have sex, talk about moving to Portugal, and hang out with their friends who they've inexplicably invited to join them. But their carefree joy is tragically cut short when a seaweed-draped zombie stumbles out of the ocean, vomits black goop on Danny's face, and then collapses and dies. At the hospital Danny also dies, but revives shortly thereafter with a taste for human flesh and bad attitude. When Denise finally realizes that death hasn't actually parted her from her husband, she must decide whether to stay and support him in his new hobby or do the sensible thing and RUN AWAY FROM THE FLESH-EATING FREAK.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
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Barbara's Rant
When we meet Denise and Danny, they are running away from the church, ditching all their guests and skipping the reception presumably planned for them, laughing about how Denise wore a red veil in order to shock her parents. Naturally, I disliked them immediately. I mean really, are you 14 years old? Shouldn't you have outgrown the need to do something shocking just to get a reaction from your parents? Why not just run off to Vegas and hitched the way you want instead of making your parents organize a church wedding just so you can be obnoxious about it? How rude. Then we had to watch them shagging in the garden, which also annoyed me since they had a perfectly lovely house with several beds/couches/carpets they could have chosen instead. In fact, even the linoleum kitchen floor would have been preferable to wood chips in your back. Ouch!
I have to admit that Denise grew on me, though. For one thing, she was by far the best actor in the movie. (Danny was just embarrassing. One of the chapters was titled "My board!", and it starts with Danny delivering that line [in response to the return of his beloved surfboard] with the worst Keanu-esqe delivery you can image. Since it was the start of a chapter, and I can no longer watch a movie in less than 3 segments due to a certain baby who keeps interrupting my movies with silly demands for food, I ended up watching it several times, leading to Barbara Jo and I exclaiming "My board!" at each other at random intervals.) Anyway, her loyalty to Danny was actually quite touching, even though I thought he was kind of an idiot even before he became a zombie. However, she really couldn't have done a worse job of supporting and care for her new husband in his time of need if she'd tried. If he'd become addicted to meth, would she have gone out and started a lab to keep him stocked up? Danny clearly needs help, and even if she had succeeded in getting them both on the plane to Portugal, how would that have been any better? He probably would have dragged a stewardess into the bathroom before they got out of US airspace. Although now that I think about it, that actually is the sort of immature response you might expect from someone who would run out on their own wedding. I confess, back when Barbara Jo was smoking and I was young and foolish, I did sometimes buy her cigarettes, even though I knew they could kill her, because at the time it seemed more important to me to demonstrate that I was completely and non-critically on her side (against what, I don't know) than it was to protect her life. Denise just couldn't seem to bring herself to admit that Danny needed to be protected from himself.
And what's her plan with the (presumably) zombie baby they suggest she's carrying? Go to Portugal and put sheep's blood in his bottle to keep him happy? Of course, they had sex both before and after his zombie-fication, so it's entirely possible that the baby will be perfectly normal and not at all dangerous (except in the many ways that all babies are dangerous). I wonder if there's a prenatal test for zombies?
BARBARA MAY
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