dirs. RKSS Collective

In the opening scene of We Are Zombies, a corpse slouches across the pavement, his left foot dragging behind him. He groans. His arms are outstretched towards an unsuspecting man, who’s finishing up at the pickup window of a local burger joint. 

The zombie gets closer. The customer finishes paying, thanks the waitress, grabs his milkshake. Slowly, he turns around, and then two men—dead and alive—collide. There’s a scuffle. This is a post-apocalyptic tale as old as time. Anyone who’s ever heard the word zombie knows what’s going to happen next. 

Or maybe not. Because instead of going for brains, this zombie extends an open palm and asks “spare change?” He looks up at the living man with desperate white sockets. This zombie is pitiful, not powerful, more human than monster. 

We Are Zombies is both a love letter to the undead cinema canon and a fresh twist on a musty genre that’s been around for over ninety years. The film was written and directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell, the minds behind the French-Canadian filmmaking team RKSS (short for Roadkill Superstars). The trio rose to prominence with their post-apocalyptic film Turbo Kid, which premiered at Sundance in 2015. Their sophomore feature, Summer of 84, established their filmic language—the team loves to play with conventions in genre, upholding their tenets while subverting expectations and updating themes for a modern audience.

Like its predecessors, in We Are Zombies the dead have come back to life and no one knows why. But are they bloodthirsty? Not really. In this world, the undead coexist among the living. There are zombie CEOS, undead porn stars. Men get shot then resume their menial jobs as body collectors. Even Mother Teresa is a from-the-grave fashion icon, attending red carpet events in style.

The bulk of the film follows three unlikely heroes, Karl, Maggie, and Freddie acted by Alexandre Nachi, Megan Peta Hill, and Derek Johns. The trio’s dynamic—brother, sister, and best friend—directly maps to that of the film’s three directors—who are also brother, sister, and best friend — though the similarities, I assume, stop there.

When they’re not playing Dungeons & Dragons or masturbating, Freddy and Karl are the boots behind a scam operation that steals zombies—or the “living impaired” as they’re called now—from a mega corporation so they can sell them to a body-mod art collective. When the company gets wind of their scheme, Karl and Maggie’s grandmother is taken hostage by corporate baddies, and our protagonists are sent on a madcap quest to get her back.

The movie is inspired by a similarly named comic book series The Zombies That Ate The World. In homage to its original medium, the movie retains the rollicking plot and teenage boy humor of a classic graphic novel. One of the primary side characters is a ZILF cosplayer (yes that’s a thing). Another dies in a sex chair. Expect some groans and also some guffaws, but in any case, the movie is impeccably adapted. No penis laser pointer is left unused, no shoelace left untied. Every prop and joke is called back at a later time to achieve greater comic effect. 

When I started watching We Are Zombies, I was concerned that the movie wouldn’t have narrative stakes. It’s a reasonable question: how can you have consequences for characters in a world where it doesn’t matter if one is dead or alive? But I shouldn’t have worried. The drama of the film is most alive in the dynamic between and the development of the three main characters, irrespective of their alive-status. There’s Freddy’s irrepressible crush on Maggie. Karl’s first real-life sexual encounter with a zombie he’s followed online for years. Maggie’s softening to her brother’s shenanigans, her journey to prioritizing love over money. And of course there’s granny, whose storyline brings a wholesome levity to the film.

Even though these zombies are innocuous at the jump, there is bloodshed to be had in the third act of the film. However, this isn’t because the undead are inherently evil, as is the norm of the genre, but rather an outcome of prejudice and corporate greed. Like all the best zombie narratives, the undead are a foil in We Are Zombies for social critique. The movie achieves a level of self-awareness closer to Shawn of the Dead than Night of the Living Dead, but this is a horror-comedy after all, so that’s to be expected. 

Without giving any spoilers, the very end of the movie leaves open the possibility for a sequel. After I watched the closing credits, I spent the next thirty minutes combing the internet to see if I could find any information on whether there was one in the works. No luck, sadly. But what did become clear as I read my umpteenth IMDB page was that after 80 minutes, I still wanted more. Fair play, RKSS.