Wow, being dead sure makes me hungry! Who’s on the menu today, honey?
Zombie Honeymoon. Zombie Honeymoon.
It sounds like a joke, doesn’t it?
It’s not.
Zombie Honeymoon (2004) addresses the unexpected implications of ‘until death do you part‘ when your spouse becomes a zombie, and it approaches them in a very somber, if frenetic, manner.
Denise and Danny are on their honeymoon on the beach in New Jersey when something staggers out of the surf, assaults Denise’s newly minted husband as he sleeps, and barfs on him before disappearing. As the emergency room doctor and nurse roll Danny into a room, he flatlines, and despite the doctor’s best efforts, he dies.
For about ten minutes.
Then he pops awake, proclaims himself fine and ready to return to the duties of honeymooning, and proves it in a most enthusiastic manner. But such activities can be quite energy intensive, and now the police are visiting, asking about a missing hospital roommate, and although the police leave empty-handed, soon enough Denise catches Danny dining, and it isn’t el fresco – it’s in the bathtub with intestines everywhere. Good thing the main course seemed to be on the edge of dying anyways, eh?
But Danny is remorseful, pleading with Denise, and she’s really got a problem here. Is Danny still her husband, having been dead ten minutes? Is she still required to be loyal and all that rot? Don’t forget the hormones and intense love she’s feeling, and she makes that choice that maybe most of us wouldn’t – but it isn’t unbelievable.
Sadly, Danny becomes less and less fun as the hunger increases, and the fact that he’s a vegetarian doesn’t really slow him down. We may cheer the loss of one really irritating friend – that character should have been rewritten – but, in general, this isn’t about the scant humor, but the loss of life brought on by Denise’s choice, the question of loyalty to one’s husband vs loyalty to society.
And, ultimately, whether Danny’s love for Denise will mean he’ll have her with a modicum of olive oil, or if the crazed monster he’s become still has a shred of humanity in it.
I mean, besides what he’s eaten.
Relentless and fast-paced, which overcomes some predictability, I did overly enjoy the candlelit dinner scene, which I think transforms the story from a somewhat predictable exploration of moral questions into something the next step up. This is better than it sounds, since I found the paranormal scene irritating and predictable. It’s a little hard to recommend it, as the violence is – unsurprisingly – unsparing, and the story doesn’t feel fully rounded, perhaps because we are talking about zombies, after all. But if you have a couple of hours to burn and enjoy a surreal situation explored by earnest storytellers, this might be right up your alley.
