A family of idle Millennials has to decide how to respond to an outbreak of zombies.
I’ve watched so many zombie movies now I’m rather hardened, and my first thought when a character in Follow The Dead was bitten on the ankle was “FGS just cut his leg off already!” Well technically I didn’t think “already” as I’m Generation X and we would never say that.
Follow The Dead is very determinedly about Millennials, a group I feel bad about criticising as we Generation Xers are of course the worst. I will say though, when I see a Millennial enraged that a lazy journalist has used the term when they mean those 20-year-old Generation Zs, that once you’re as old as Gen X you’ll be delighted anyone thinks you’re 15 years younger than you are.
Zombie films are important. They reflect us back on ourselves and force us to face up to vital truths — like if society breaks down, we’ll never know what the generation coming up after Generation Z would have called themselves.
This time we’re in Offaly in Ireland, a place with few opportunities for ordinary people. Video footage is circulating of horrific attacks in Dublin, and the local Garda have lost contact with the stations in the capital. Yet in Offaly no one really believes what they’re seeing, so inured are they to fake news and staged viral videos.
And Offaly has an extra problem: vicious masked insurgents using the chaos in Dublin, and local anger at their lack of prospects and money, as a smokescreen for their own violent, revolutionary project.
Follow The Dead is as much about home and family — and how a safe place can become a prison — as horror and fear. It starts strongly as thirtysomething Robbie Whelan (Luke Corcoran, very good) tries to get it on with his Tinder date Sonia in a remote country carpark. She is all for it until she’s distracted by the first of the Dublin zombie videos and is unimpressed when Robbie mocks it, and her. Soon he’s alone again and has to return to the home he shares with his sister, would-be online celeb Liv (Marybeth Herron) and their cousins, brothers Chi (Tadhg Devery) and malapropism-prone Jay (Luke Collins).
Robbie previously left wife Kate (Cristina Ryan), a member of the Gardai in Dublin, to look after his family. Now he discovers Kate is stationed in their town, and much of the film is about him facing up to who he really is, and how he can give his layabout relatives some get up and go — even more important with the approaching apocalypse. Can they fight back, or even flee? Do they want to? And why does everybody keep running out of petrol?
None of the Whelans has a job, though Jay, unencumbered by the burden of an eight-hour working day, spends a lot of time pondering what he sees as the apathy and something-for-nothing attitude of his generation. Liv at least considers herself full-time employed: “Internet personality is a real job too,” she reminds Robbie. “How many subscribers do you have?” “44.”
The big questions for a zomcom are, is it scary and is it funny? Once the zombies turn up — the contagion transmitted like a baton in a relay race all the way from Dublin — everything moves up a gear. These are reasonably fast ones (or maybe it just looks that way compared to the slothful Chi and Jay), and the vigilantes are genuinely menacing — the transitions from comedy to shock at the situations the Whelans find themselves in are well done. There are a couple of solid jump scares and I’ll admit I did check doors and windows before I went to bed. (Though any undead round here would probably head straight to Waitrose and tug-o-war the last sourdough baton until someone’s arm fell off.)
The four cousins have great chemistry; thanks to their timing the family banter sounds very real. I did laugh at a raised by wolves gag and the burial of Mrs Moody’s zombie dog. One of Liv’s cafe vox pops, a young lad who holds no truck with the impending zombie apocalypse, is a hoot, playing out the collapse of civilisation and its particularly wet victims to perfection. (Karma’s a bitch though so I expect by now he’s just a pile of twitching limps and grey goo.)
In parts it could be tighter, and some of the minor characters sound flat. Still, it’s an impressive debut from writer-director Adam William Cahill, considering how long zombies have been the preeminent horror movie antagonists.
And while I can’t comment on his depiction of Millennials (I’m assuming Cahill is one, a bit like when I mock Boden mummies while wearing white trainers and a nice maxi dress) I understand better the need among younger people to become their authentic selves, to DO BETTER. They’ve been watching zombie films since they were toddlers and know if they want to survive the undead, there won’t be time to resolve long-dormant relationship disputes first like in the movies. They’ll need that time to pack the car, fill up with petrol and watch YouTube videos on how to kill a zombie.
I’m quite proud that when the zombies do arrive everyone younger than me will be ready, taking their whole selves to work, when work is to authentically behead the undead as they lollop towards us trailing gunk.
I of course will be there to screw everything up for everybody, including their future. Hey I’m Generation X, that’s what we do!
Follow The Dead is available from Amazon.co.uk in the UK, and Tubi and Amazon.com in the USA. The film is coming out in Ireland soon.
Read my (very spoilery) recap article: No stoner unturned? Follow The Dead explained (sort of)
Watch the Follow The Dead trailer now:
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