This is quite possibly one of the funniest movies ever made.
It succeeds not simply thru its humor but in the way that it takes the plot seriously. That is, the characters avoid doing anything cliché or 'movie-like'. They react to an amazingly unusual situation in a very logical, sensible way (even as things become more & more desperate). Consequently none of the humor is forced. It all comes from the combination of having to deal with all the insane things that are happening to them in the sanest way that they can. The contrast of these two makes for absolutely brilliant comedy.
For example:
» They have to kill an already dead guy so they put a pick axe thru his head.
» This doesn't kill him so they saw his head off.
» This still doesn't work so they decide to incinerate him in the neighbor's crematorium.
» In order to do that they make up a "rabid weasels" story to tell the neighbor.
All of these things, as hilariously ridiculous as they are, actually make sense in the context of trying to deal with the situation. In other words, if you found yourself confronted with re-animated corpses you would probably do exactly what they do to try and stop them. And even as the situation slowly progresses from bad to worse to desperate the film maintains this idea.
In fact, the film quite brilliantly maintains this idea at the very end. As over-the-top as the ending seemed I can completely picture the military wanting to do exactly that!
It succeeds not simply thru its humor but in the way that it takes the plot seriously. That is, the characters avoid doing anything cliché or 'movie-like'. They react to an amazingly unusual situation in a very logical, sensible way (even as things become more & more desperate). Consequently none of the humor is forced. It all comes from the combination of having to deal with all the insane things that are happening to them in the sanest way that they can. The contrast of these two makes for absolutely brilliant comedy.
For example:
» They have to kill an already dead guy so they put a pick axe thru his head.
» This doesn't kill him so they saw his head off.
» This still doesn't work so they decide to incinerate him in the neighbor's crematorium.
» In order to do that they make up a "rabid weasels" story to tell the neighbor.
All of these things, as hilariously ridiculous as they are, actually make sense in the context of trying to deal with the situation. In other words, if you found yourself confronted with re-animated corpses you would probably do exactly what they do to try and stop them. And even as the situation slowly progresses from bad to worse to desperate the film maintains this idea.
In fact, the film quite brilliantly maintains this idea at the very end. As over-the-top as the ending seemed I can completely picture the military wanting to do exactly that!