Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I had a screener of this one here in the house, and I think it got ruined in the rainstorm when I discovered a leak in my office skylights. As a result, I never got a chance to take a look at it. Once again, the hardest working man in rock and roll is here with a review, though. Capone, you are truly a wild animal. What is that? 487 reviews today?

Hey folks. Capone in Chicago here.

Filmmaker Grace Lee has always had a more light-hearted and amusing approach to her documentary subjects, including one film (THE GRACE LEE PROJECT) about the countless number of Asian women in America who have her name. But AMERICAN ZOMBIE is her first attempt at a feature film, in the form of a fake documentary about a world in which zombies (often referred to as "revenants") are a part of every day life. Before you go slinging around the term "mockumentary," be aware that Lee's film is not attempting to be funny. It takes a (usually) serious approach to zombie lifestyles and the way their species has become ingrained in our society. Lee and fellow director John Solomon play themselves in front of the camera as pair of filmmakers jointly making a documentary about zombies' place in our world. Lee approaches the movie as the story of societal outcasts, while Solomon is digging for dirt and trying to figure out if they really do eat human flesh or deliberately try to convert humans into the living dead.

In Lee's world of zombie-dom, zombies fall into three categories: your stereotypical crazed, blood-thirsty variety, which have effectively been eradicated from the earth; a more mindless, passive type that are often used (some would say exploited) as slave labor in sweat shops; and the functional zombie, who in nearly every way possible, look, talk and act just like us, except that they are very pale and often have some type of terrible wound or scarring from whatever incident killed them in the first place. They eat regular food (there are even vegan zombies), have sex (although they cannot reproduce), and enjoy all the modern distractions of our world. Although the reasons for the rise of zombies on the planet are not given, the means by which zombies are created are. Only a small percentage of deaths result in turning into a zombie, and then, only a truly violent death will do the trick. There is an enzyme in the saliva that can infect other people, but such cases are rare. The filmmakers profile a small handful of fully functional zombies, some of whom are in denial about their condition. Others have embraced their marginalized status and founded equal rights organizations for their kind. Others lead simple, quiet lives. None seem dangerous.

But once a year, somewhere out in the desert, thousands of zombies get together to celebrate their lot in life at a part music fair, part Burning Man, part hippie gathering that excludes all humans. Lee and her crew are somehow granted limited access to the event, and things turn weird and scary. AMERICAN ZOMBIE takes what could easily have been a one-note premise and expands it into an interesting look at a fictional community that is looked upon with disgust, mistrust and outright fear. Much like mutants in the world of the X-Men, zombies in Lee's movie are stand-ins for immigrants, followers of non-Christian religions, homosexuals or Canadians. Thankfully, her message isn't seeping out of every pore of this film. Instead, she couches her observations is this clever and tightly woven tale of a filmmaker a little too deep into the lives of her subjects.

Capone