All Souls Day: Dia de los Muertos (2005) directed by Jeremy Kasten.
(Proposed Title: “Supernatural zombies phoning it in.”)
Starring Marisa Ramirez, Travis Wester, Nichole Hiltz, Laz Alonso, Laura Harring and David Keith.
Zombie Film Rating:

“Poor Ugly Zombie Esmerelda”

Teaser: Santa Bonito, Mexico has a secret, a secret that makes itself public every November 1st, on the “Day of the Dead”. Naturally it is on this day that Tyler and Alicia drive into town looking for gas, interupt a human sacrifice and find themselves barricaded in an ancient hotel. Nice vacation, no?

While there are some problems with this film, overall I found it a fairly inoffensive effort, with fair acting and good directing, cinematography and scoring. The film really barely rates as a zombie movie as the zombies serve more as set decoration than an integral part of the film, but still I rarely found my thumb creeping towards the “fast forward” button, so it couldn’t have been all bad (that may have been a side effect of the scotch however).

“Cat got your tongue?”

Plot Summary: The Town of Santa Bonito in 1895 is run by the Diaz Family. When the townspeople discover an ancient Incan temple belonging to the Lady of the Dead Vargas Diaz makes a deal with the entire town to split the treasure found within. The treasure, once removed from the temple, is held by Vargas while the town celebrates the “day of the dead”. They enter the temple during the celebrations and find themselves buried alive when Vargas and his hired goons seal the entrance with explosives.

Fargas has made a deal with the “Lady of the Dead” for immortality, and rewards his goons in a manner similar to the townspeople shortly thereafter. His moment of glory is shortlived however, with the return of the sheriff and a short gun battle that see’s both the Sheriff and Vargas’ son killed.

We flash forward now to 1952, with the White family on vacation in Mexico. Running short on fuel they stop in at Santa Bonito, and attempt to check in at the local hotel. Finding no staff, and only two Mexican women who seem to have no interest in helping them, they let themselves into a few rooms and settle in for the night.

“Zombie party? We’re in!”

Their eldest daughter Sarah encounters a disturbing young boy in her room, is attacked by an old Mexican lady with a hatchet and stumbles out into the street where she finds herself surrounded by slow moving zombies clothed in rags. She is mobbed by the zombies, and we presume her to die in the melee.

We flash forward once again, to 2005. Alicia and Tyler are driving south through Mexico to meet Alicias parents. Finding themselves somewhat lost, they stop in at the nearest town (again, Santa Bonito) to obtain directions. As they pull into the town Tyler nearly drives into a funeral procession, and crashes his car. The procession members scatter, and out of the coffin they had been carrying tumbles a naked girl, blood covering her face.

We learn the naked girl is named Esmerelda, and she has had her tongue cut out by the procession members to prevent her from screaming. While Alicia stays with Esmerelda Tyler runs to the Sheriffs office to report what appears to be a significant crime. Once there he meets with Sheriff Blanco, who seems fairly disinterested in the crime and tells the two kids to check themselves into the local hotel while he escorts Esmerelda to the police station (in lieu of medical attention I s’pose).

“Relief? I spell it M-O-S-S-B-E-R-G!”

Leaving Esmerelda in the care of Sheriff White (Blanco.. White.. Get it?) Tyler and Alicia check into the hotel, deal briefly with the strange staff and a few hallucinations, call their friends to invite them to wierdville and then some quick pre-marital sex.

With the arrival of their friends Joss and Erica, Tyler and Alicia reluctantly explain the strange events in the town and make their intention to leave immediately known. A little doubtful, Joss and Erica eventually agree and just before they leave Tyler runs over to the Sheriffs office to recover his drivers licence (retained by the Sheriff immediately after the accident). He finds Esmerelda dead in her cell, and the Sheriffs holstered pistol on the floor. Exercising a rare moment of common sense, he grabs the pistol and races back to the Hotel where he finds Joss and Erica asleep, and Alicia missing.

In a flash of inspiration he races to the church and interupts a ceremony in which the Sheriff was about to sacrifice Alicia. Shooting the Sheriff, Tyler carries Alicia back to the hotel as the Sheriff utters a warning that the sacrifice was the only way to stop “them”. While Tyler and company barricade themselves into the hotel, the Sheriff is eaten by uninspired zombies.

“Naked on an altar! Have you been drinking again sweetie?”

Once safely barricaded inside the hotel, Tyler realizes that they only have the single magazine for the Sheriffs pistol, and volunteers to sprint across the street to grab more ammunition. Alicia offers to cover him, and as Tyler runs through the zombies she fires a half dozen shots into the air (That’s cover?). Tyler finds the cells empty, and the zombified Esmerelda zips from the back room to attack him. Esmerelda is the only zombie that moves faster than a snails pace, and she throws Tyler around the office a few times, takes a bite out of his leg and shrugs off three shotgun blasts before Tyler locks her into the cells.

Stumbling back to the hotel the kids come up with a new plan, Erica will gymnastisize herself to her car, then drive it to the front doors of the hotel and everyone can escape this dreaded town. The plan works in theory, and Erica retrieves the car, but at the last minute Alicia tells Joss she’s going to stay with the disturbed hotel staff and Tyler, and insists that Joss escape with Erica and send help once they’re away. This plan of course self-destructs when Joss runs to the car, goes around the car and attempts to board the vehicle on the passenger (also known as the “zombie horde”) side of the car. He’s eaten, and Erica drives in circles, eventually being eaten herself in a misguided effort to rescue Joss long after he’s been consumed.

“Is this where you retired to after ‘From Dusk till Dawn’?”

Alicia experiences a series of flashbacks with the assistance of the hotels maid, and concludes that the zombies merely want in to the hotel in order to extract their vengeance upon Vargas Diaz who has been living upstairs for the last 100 years. This plan now formed, she unlocks the doors and makes her way to Vargas’ room where he flexes his supernatural muscles and is about to molest Alicia when the zombies arrive in the nick of time.

With Vargas destroyed the curse is lifted, and Alicia and Tyler stumble into the sunrise.

Critique: This is not truly a zombie film. There is no real blood, guts and gore. The “zombie” effects are elementary, and are never shown in close up, and each characters demise is shown through the zombie equivalent of a “group hug” where the character disappears under a mob of the undead. Zombies that are shot stumble backwards, and again the effects are basic at best.

The logic eludes me entirely here. I understand the Sheriff is supposed to be the son of the White family (that 1952 scene), but he appears approximately 20 years too young. The curse itself however is what confuses me most. Vargas Diaz made a pact with the “Lady of the Dead”, we can only assume his deal was to live forever in the town, in the hotel he already owned before making the pact. Great deal, no? As a bonus, this deal has all the dead inhabitants of the town trying to kill Vargas once a year unless a Mexican girl is sacrificed. This is either the worst case of failing to read the fine print in the world, or it makes no sense at all. Why Vargas didn’t just leave the town is never explained either.

The zombies themselves are primarily “shamblers” except for Esmerelda, who becomes a crazed, ninja-esque zombie for no obvious reason. Ironically this one scene, while irritating when considered in context, has the sort of tension and excitement we would expect from the entire film. It’s about 90 seconds long, enjoy it, it won’t be repeated.

Production values are high, unfortunately this merely serves as a reminder that there’s little substance to the film.

The Final Word: Sure, give it a rental. Taken for what it is it’s not a bad film, as a zombie movie however it remains a disappointing effort.