The Mad

It's rare to find a semi-indie dark comedy featuring a big(-ish) name star...and zombies! The Mad is a fun flick about a dysfunctional family taking a little road trip and encountering more excitement than a good deal on gas prices.

From the start you're thrown into a new-age eighties synth-rock montage of cows grazing and looking ominous. Creepy farmer dude grinds up some beef and delivers a shipment of it to a Podunk diner and we've pretty much got the location for our movie. The family arrives and we see that Billy Zane (yes, The Phantom!), his girlfriend, and his daughter, as well as her kiss-ass boyfriend, are trying miserably to get along and failing. What better a way to relax from hours of driving than to stop at a small town during a festival. Woo-wee, kissin' booths and shootin' ranges gone done made this town a hoot. Anyway, they go into the diner, bicker, and then the fun starts.

The zombies in this movie are actually victims of a mutated Mad Cow Disease that ran rampant through creepy farmer's livestock, brought to its zenith by an unsanctioned chemical/medicine. What makes it better is that they're not mindless in the whole ravenous flesh-craving sense; instead they're just stupid to the inability to process higher thought. So far it really just sounds like a horror movie from my description, and a bad one at that...but it's not. The dialog, as well as the level of acting (some good, some laughably bad), makes this movie gold. In the middle of situations that, in serious horror movies, most would merely disolve into panic accompanied by a caucophony of dissonant music (or hard rock), The Mad features often-amusing conversations about whether or not the mob outside should really be called "zombies."
Billy Zane gives a stellar performance as the doctor dad. Don't get me wrong-- it would never be good enough to get any kind of award, but he plays the part excellently. From the generation-behind vacant stares he gives when others use modern lingo to the sometimes overprotective father reactions to his daughter and her boyfriend...I mean, he's awesome.

The gore's not too bad, but the language is. It's not a movie for the kids, but let's face it: no horror movie is truly intended for children. If you want to have a laugh while watching zombies swarm over hapless victims, and your copy of Shaun of the Dead is out on loan, check out The Mad.