Pardon the pun, but the zombie genre is walking dead at this point. The subgenre has been done and redone, with almost all originality and nearly every twist rung out of it. At least that’s what I thought before sitting down to watch Fantasia Fest‘s premiere of Lee Min-Jae’s The Odd Family: Zombie for Sale, one of my top 10 most-anticipated movies going into Fantasia Fest. The writer/director’s zombie comedy gives the genre a twist that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before but nearly abandons it entirely for a less interesting, run-of-the-mill zombie film.
The Odd Family: Zombie for Sale is the story of the Park family, who runs a gas station on a lonely road out in the middle of nowhere in South Korea. With no one to buy gas at their rundown gas station, the Park family has resorted to less than ethical means of getting by—lying in wait for drivers to crash on windy roads and then overcharging them for simple repairs. This business, as unethical as it is, is flipped on its head when a zombie finds its way into the Park family’s lap.
The young living dead man, a runaway test subject from a nearby laboratory, ends up biting Man-Duk Park, the patriarch of the family, during a chance encounter. But instead of turning the man into a zombie himself, he is turned 20 years younger, trading his thinning grey hair for thick black hair and losing his less than impressive member and enlarged prostate for a well-oiled machine (so to speak). The Park family soon realizes the opportunity and starts to sell bites to old men in the community, leading to some unforeseen consequences.
While the film is enjoyable for a while, Zombie for Sale fails to infuse enough new blood into a dying subgenre to make this zom-com worth the nearly two-hour commitment. The film starts out with a flavor that feels very much like Lee watched Shaun of the Dead right before starting shooting. The comedy is very similar and apparent from the start. It tends to fall a little flat at times, but ultimately the problem with Zombie for Sale is that the premise of a zombie bite giving life rather than taking it is nearly abandoned for a less interesting storyline for almost the entire third act.
At a certain point in the film, Man-Duk’s character takes off, and this is where the film really suffers. Up until that point, his character is endlessly loveable and the highlight of the film. He keeps his less than likable children in line and comes down on them when they act stupidly. What really sucks about is absence leaves us with this largely unenjoyable cast of characters. Man-Duk and his daughter, Hie-Gul, aside, the Park family is full of scummy characters that aren’t fun enough in their narcissism to be likable in their bad tendencies. Joon-Gul is a wimp who is just out to make money, Min-Gul is a failed white-collar man, and Nam-Joo is just a grump. Their greed and narcissism lead to a few conflicts that might delight some, but they do little to advance the story overall and serve more as roadblocks to kill time before the film’s big twist.>
There is a better film inside of The Odd Family: Zombie for Sale, I’m sure. It introduces some fresh ideas, but the movie gets lost with a meandering, bloated third act that had me checking my watch and retreads territory similar to nearly every other zombie movie you’ve ever seen.
RATING: C
