Synopsis: An unemployed recent college grad hires two freelance paranormal exterminators to combat a monster infestation in her new home.
When I saw the poster for The Neon Dead it instantly caught my attention with bright colors and some interesting looking creatures adorning the one sheet with the caption reading “A grin from fear to fear” or “Death Shines on You” depending on the poster. Other than that, I knew absolutely zero going into this ultra low budget horror flick spawned from an Indiegogo campaign. There were zero recognizable names and I never heard a peep about it. So, seeing that this is the year I dig deep and scrape through things I haven’t seen I figured why not give this a shot. After some of the films I’ve subjected myself to this month I’m kind of regretting that decision.
The story is pretty basic with Allison (Marie Barker) discovering a glitching/glowing/oozing zombie in her bathroom and subsequently hiring Desmond (Greg Garrison) and Jake (D. Dylan Schettina) at the behest of a young wilderness scout at her door. All hell breaks loose and the “neon dead” are infesting the surrounding area being led by a sword wielding deadite with a glowing rictus grin. Eventually the trio discovers that these aren’t your normal zombies but actually disciples of Z’athax, who just so happens to be an intergalactic demon summoned by Allison’s ancestors.
It’s an ambitious story and I applaud Haas and crew for what they accomplished but I feel that they might have bitten off more than they can chew. The zombie effects were fairly unique and rather eye-catching with their black light neon glow and glitchy movements but the dialogue was god awful. I could see what they were attempting, trying to go with an Evil Dead 2 kind of tongue in cheek approach but the hit or miss comedy falls flat. I did have a chuckle at the stop motion puppetry used for Z’athax though. It was giving me vibes of the shorts I was making back in high school.
Long story short, “A” for effort but “C” for execution. Taking into account that this was a campaign backed, low budget project I can give it the benefit of the doubt. I’m curious if we will ever see anything else from this young fledgling writer/director because I can see potential in his first feature length effort. It’s just going to take him a bit to get it all to gel.
If you want to view this one for yourself, then head on over to Tubi. It’s streaming there as of this writing. As for me, I kind of want my 80 minutes back.
Join me again tomorrow and we’ll continue this strange little journey down the horror rabbit hole…hopefully with some better selections.
