Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)
Not so long ago I sat through a zombie comedy that was so busy cracking jokes it forgot zombies were supposed to be scary. That film left me cold. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse is the direct antidote to that problem, and a neat little lesson in getting the balance right.
Christopher Landon's film drops three teenage scouts, on the very eve of quitting their troop, into a full-blown zombie outbreak in their home town. Right from the off, it's clear this isn't a film that's going to use comedy as a crutch. The undead here are a genuine threat, playing by the familiar Romero rules, and the laughs are layered on top of a working horror film rather than used to paper over the cracks where the horror should be. That sounds like a simple thing to get right. You'd be amazed how many films in this sub-genre manage to fluff it.
The three leads share a likeable, bickering energy that sits somewhere in the Superbad family. There's a real warmth to their friendship, even when they're at each other's throats, and that goes a long way when the film asks you to root for them running through zombie-infested streets with whatever weapons they can scavenge. The humour is very much the raucous, gross-out teen comedy variety, which won't be everyone's cup of tea, but at its best it's inspired-stupid in a way I found genuinely hard to resist. There is one gag involving a zombie's, let's say, dangling anatomy that is so completely daft it had me laughing out loud at the sheer nerve of it.
When it misfires, though, it lurches into territory that's needlessly crude, and one bit in particular goes somewhere too tasteless to earn its laugh. It's the kind of moment that makes you wince rather than wince-and-laugh, which is a meaningful distinction. The film is a fair bit dumber and cruder than the classics it's clearly chasing, and it knows it. It doesn't pretend to be anything grander than what it is.
What it is, though, is a properly entertaining zom-com that delivers exactly what you want from the genre. The gore is plentiful and gleefully executed, the pace rattles along without ever overstaying its welcome, and the finale pays things off in a satisfying way. This is the same tradition as Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland, films that are funny and tense in equal measure, and I think Scouts Guide earns its spot in that company, even if it's sitting a few rows further back. It's not reinventing anything. It doesn't need to. It just needs to be a real horror film as well as a comedy, and it manages that where so many others stumble. For a contrast in how badly wrong the zombie sub-genre can go when it strips out the actual horror, I'd point you towards The Video Dead, a film with almost the opposite set of problems.
If Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland are your sort of thing, there's a very good chance this is right up your street. It's gory, goofy and good-hearted, and it does the zom-com the right way round. Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2015 | Watched: 2026-08-30
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
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