Director: Matthias Hoene
Starring: Rasmus Hardiker, Harry Treadaway, Michelle Ryan, Alan Ford, Honor Blackman
Running Time: 88 minutes
Certificate: 15
Extras: ‘Behind The Scenes’ features
Perhaps the best thing you can say about COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES is that it’s better than a film called COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES has any right to be. A title that will send shivers down the spine of any Film Production lecturer, it’s actually a reasonably well-made, if fiercely derivative, horror comedy. It takes the vast majority of its cues from SHAUN OF THE DEAD, a film that has more and more to answer to with every passing year. Opening on a pair of buffoonish construction workers stumbling into a pit that contains a zombie, it puts its SHAUN-meets-LOCK STOCK game plan into action immediately, cribbing the in-your-face editing styles of Edgar Wright and Guy Richie (who in turn take many of their techniques from others, making this a veritable smorgasbord of unoriginality).
After a swearing and banter-filled opening (there’s a pretty insane amount of profanity in this film), we cut to our main characters, another pair of buffoons. These buffoons are brothers played by Harry Treadaway and Rasmus Hardiker, and along granddad Alan Ford (of LOCK STOCK and SNATCH fame), are responsible for the majority of the film’s best work. As derivative and ‘that’ll do’ as the plot is, the three main actors are more than game, layering on a little depth to otherwise underwritten and mostly charmless characters. The brothers are planning a bank robbery in order to save Alan Ford’s old folks’ home, along with some maniac, their cousin (Michelle Ryan, doing the toughest face she can possibly muster) and yet another buffoon (Jack Doolan). Unsurprisingly, the robbery goes awry, and the police show up. Of course, the police issue is quickly surpassed by a slightly more pressing one, and we are straight into zombie movies by numbers.
The derivativeness wouldn’t be an issue if the film played around with the tropes of the zombie movie a little more, but it basically doesn’t. SHAUN took the preexisting zombie cliches and added and played around with them. COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES is from the SNAKES ON A PLANE school of filmmaking, only with an even more annoying title and even less concern for originality. It’s not without its sparks and bright spots (the idea that everyone is media-literate enough to recognise these monsters as zombies and know how to defeat them is refreshing, and the film’s willingness to go over the top produces a couple of decent gags), but without the lively cast, it would scream ‘Student Film With A Budget’. It doesn’t deliver any less than its title suggests, but that’s really not much to begin with.
COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES is available to buy on DVD 22nd October
