Festival of the Living Dead (2024)

The Soska sisters (American Mary, Rabid (2019), and my personal favourite: the Hellevator TV series!) bring us Gen Z teens fighting zombies in this "spiritual sequel" to Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

Set 55 years on, the festival in question is commemorating that past zombie outbreak... and our lead, Ash (Ashley Moore), is trying to fit in after years of being a social outcast with one good friend, Iris (Camren Bicondova). 

Ash agrees to attend the festival along with her douchebag boyfriend and his terrible friends, while Iris covers babysitting duties. When everything almost immediately starts going wrong, Ash's heroic heritage of being the granddaughter of Night's Ben (Duane Jones), and being rather skilled with a shotgun, certainly comes in handy.

Social media influencers start snorting dust from a recently crashed meteor near the festival site - could see a YouTuber legit doing this btw - triggering a zombie outbreak as they die and reanimate ("Talk about going viral..." <-- actual dialogue 🤦‍♂️). But now it's 2020's festival style, with fairy wings and face glitter.

At the risk of stating the brutally obvious, Festival of the Living Dead is not to be taken too seriously! It's a fun little appetizer of a zombie flick; a silly, simplistic, colourful romp of snark, guts, and finding your place in a terrifying world.

This song also gave me an earworm.

Really reminds me of the indie I was into in my early twenties. Got that Dandy Warhols vibe, y'know?

Anyway, this is streaming on Tubi now. I picked it out of a whole heap of zed flicks currently in their catalogue. Maybe services are stocking up for when we all get zombie fever again, from the soon-to-be-released 28 Years Later? We can hope.