by Charles Kirkland, Jr.
What do you do when you tell the woman you are supposed to marry to save your transplanted mob family that you don’t want to get married and then she turns into a zombie? If you are in the comedy-horror, Witness Infection, you fight.
Carlo (Robert Belushi) is happy as a dog groomer in the local shop in town where he works with Gina (Jill-Michele Melean) who he secretly loves. Happy until his mob boss’ father comes to the shop and tells him that he has to marry Patricia (Erinn Hayes) in order to save his brother from being killed by the father of the other mob family in town. When Carlo goes to the family dinner and refuses to marry Patricia, some tainted meat from Uncle Vince’s restaurant starts turning everyone in town into flesh-eating zombies.
Witness Infection is the creation of MADtv alum Melean and voice acting superstar Carlos Alazraqui (The Fairy Oddparents, Planes, Happy Feet). Both Melean and Alazraqui are comedians who have appeared on Comedy Central’s Reno 911. Infection stars Belushi, Hayes, and Melean with Vince Donvito, Bret Ernst, Tara Strong, Alazraqui, and High School Musical’s Monique Coleman in a hilariously meta scene.
The good news is that this film goes somewhere that no other zombie movie or show has ever gone, at least not in recent years. Not The Walking Dead. Not Shaun of the Dead. And certainly, none of the movies in the Night of the Living Dead series has ever taken the time to explain what exactly is the cause of the zombie outbreak. No matter how ridiculous the explanation is, no one has ever taken the time before.
The fact that they have a ridiculous and implausible explanation for the outbreak serves as no rescue of the faulty and nonsensical plot by any stretch of the imagination. Credit should be given for the attempt of Melean and Alazraqui to try to address the over-the-top silliness of the film. For instance, the characters openly wonder who in the Justice Department had the bright idea to put two mob families in witness protection in the same small town, Lake Elsinore, CA. Yet credit is not due. Instead of trying to explain things, the writers should have committed to making this either a comedy movie with zombies (Shaun of the Dead) or a zombie flick with some comedy (The Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse). This film excels in neither.
The bad news is that this movie is really bad. It is so bad that it goes into classically bad territory. It is poorly acted, completely unfrightening, and totally predictable by even a blind man. There are some films that are so bad that they become cult classics, this is not one of them.
Rated PG-13 for some violence, gore, and thematic elements, Witness Infection is the worst that it can be, making us all sick enough to wish that we had witnessed something else, anything else. Don’t worry this film will disappear quickly enough for you to find something.
Witness Infection is available in theaters and On Demand.
Grade: F