An insult to intelligence

Rating: 2/10 (13 April 2013)

I came into the theatre expecting a coherent ("It's based on a novel so there has to be some consistency" I thought, stupidly) story set in a post-apocalyptic world (it's a zombie movie, after all) with some dark humour thrown into the mix for good measure. What I discovered was an inconsistent, bland, badly acted attempted romance-movie with ridiculous (not in the good way) dialogues.
In short: We meet a zombie (R) who has incredibly coherent thought processes for a zombie, yet chooses to eat brains for sustenance. If this garish action is really necessary we never truly find out, after all he doesn't eat for a week after meeting Julie (the bland, berating love interest badly played by Teresa Palmer), but the movie dismisses this rather vital part of information with the following mind-blowing dialogue.
Julie: Do you have to eat brains? R: Yes
Seriously.
The movie then goes on about how R is changing, yet the characters seem to ignore this fact - no one seems taken aback in the least that zombies suddenly can talk, even though it's been established that such a thing is impossible. Hell, the fact that they run seems very implausible to me seeing as how the entire intro sequence is dedicated to R telling us how he shuffles around all day and when he goes out to feed he literally says: "this is going to take a while", but I digress.
This is figuratively literally the tip of the iceberg, and just to illustrate this point, this is the way the movie handles the love interest losing her initial boyfriend (whom the movie then tries to turn into a douche bag by making him act like one in a dream sequence so we wouldn't be so creeped out when she makes out with the zombie who ate his brains).
R eats boyfriend's brain. R rescues Julie (by smearing what appears to be poop on her - I guess it was supposed to be blood) through some unexplained process several times. Julie NEVER mentions her ex-boyfriend. Suddenly, in a throw-away line, she explains that it's not that she's not sad - it's just that she prepared for this. Yeah, that's how emotions work.
There are still loads of things to point out (for instance how rotting zombies become super-human monsters once they totally flip out and become 'skellies'), but I hope my point has gotten across. The only reason I give this movie more than 1/10 is the way Analeigh Tipton says 'Sup?' to the zombie R when he (successfully) wins Julie back after having explained to her that he ate her boyfriend's brain, but has now walked a couple of miles so it should be okay.