tyler
A Burden on Online Simpsons Fandom Since '13
#59
this thoh may have a little goodwill from me right now but you're gonna need more than that to try and make another zombie segment that's even fit to scrub the wounds of the exemplary original. to this outing's credit, it less feels like 28 days later in yellowface and more like again, a broader parody of the zombie genre as it has developed. the hallmarks of nu-zombie flicks are evident, the desaturated colors, the contamination angle, more aggressive zombies, and more emphasis on survival horror in a post-apocalyptic fashion. we've even got bart as our antidote plot device, all the tropes are in order and help us get from point a to point b with little fuss, it's a much less flatlined take on modern movies because there's indication someone has actually studied the damn things this time.
sadly, all that tone from the last segment is largely absent, most jokes feel detached from the premise and stakes don't seem to too heavily affect our characters. the best joke in the episode is the creative impetus, krusty's transparently nightmarish new burgers rendering people basically undead, it was only a matter of time before krusty's irresponsible business running would cause another horror, and this time its massive, but then you have bart, knowing full well these burgers have caused essentially the apocalypse, skittering down to a dilapidated krusty burger to scrounge up himself a tainted burger as well, and that moreso sets the tone for how this segment can't decide how seriously to take itself. another instance of jean and crew maybe not quite getting how irreverence in these segments works, you can fight the tone for comedy but you can't just shrug off all the details like they don't matter, that kinda hurts the effort. a more bearable modarn movie based segment than many, but still severely impaired by its execution and rather thin story.
this thoh may have a little goodwill from me right now but you're gonna need more than that to try and make another zombie segment that's even fit to scrub the wounds of the exemplary original. to this outing's credit, it less feels like 28 days later in yellowface and more like again, a broader parody of the zombie genre as it has developed. the hallmarks of nu-zombie flicks are evident, the desaturated colors, the contamination angle, more aggressive zombies, and more emphasis on survival horror in a post-apocalyptic fashion. we've even got bart as our antidote plot device, all the tropes are in order and help us get from point a to point b with little fuss, it's a much less flatlined take on modern movies because there's indication someone has actually studied the damn things this time.
sadly, all that tone from the last segment is largely absent, most jokes feel detached from the premise and stakes don't seem to too heavily affect our characters. the best joke in the episode is the creative impetus, krusty's transparently nightmarish new burgers rendering people basically undead, it was only a matter of time before krusty's irresponsible business running would cause another horror, and this time its massive, but then you have bart, knowing full well these burgers have caused essentially the apocalypse, skittering down to a dilapidated krusty burger to scrounge up himself a tainted burger as well, and that moreso sets the tone for how this segment can't decide how seriously to take itself. another instance of jean and crew maybe not quite getting how irreverence in these segments works, you can fight the tone for comedy but you can't just shrug off all the details like they don't matter, that kinda hurts the effort. a more bearable modarn movie based segment than many, but still severely impaired by its execution and rather thin story.