Looking Down

Rating: Null/10 (13 October 2004)

Spoilers herein.
Movies are nearly always about other movies, and here's a great example.
In this great piece of writing, we have explicit nods to three layered worlds. There's the world of the viewer, from which the simple artifacts of troubled relationships are drawn. At a rather precise rhythm, this is brought to the front, no matter what else happens.
Then there's the layer of the pubgoers, Shaun and girlfriend. And under that is the world of the zombies. Ted's law is that when you have a film within a film, the abstract distance between the first and second is exactly the same as between the second and third.
The film starts with Liz telling her boyfriend that she doesn't want to be with him any more because she is afraid she will become a zombie. The boyfriend goes around the room and takes apparent zombies and makes up a film for each one: gangsters, porn and so on.
Then, we fall into a movie within the movie as effortlessly as an unwanted, even disturbing song comes up on the jukebox. It all centers on whether the pub is the place for zombies or non-zombies. Every action, every scene is drawn from prior films, and not always straight horror films.
A dog can only look down the levels, never up. Except maybe. In the end, our hero has avoided the pub zombie disease; his buddy has not, which means he is pretty much at the end as he is in the beginning.
'Stacy, Schoolgirl Zombies,' is another, more obvious example.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.