High school prom, high school love, high school drama, nerds, jocks, cool kids, teens who are running for their lives (but still bite off their curse words), Zombies who can drive and who are soothed by rock and roll. This is Dance of the Dead, a 2008 film directed by Gregg Bishop.
Dance of the Dead is fairly light fare as far as zombie films go. The story is about a small town with a graveyard next to a power plant. One night the plant lets loose a gas that makes the dead rise and attack. Coincidentally, the release of the compound happens the same night as the high school prom. We pick up the action—and all the accompanying teen drama—the day of the prom, and in no time the dead are up and we are running with a group of nerds and cool kids as they battle the zombies and plan a rescue of the prom.
The film is done in a tongue-in-cheek fashion and is in the same vein as Return of the Living Dead. There are a few genuinely scary scenes, a few genuinely funny scenes, and some decent one-liners. Most of the frights come from the use of under-cranked action, quick editing and sudden scares. The zombies move inconsistently, some run fast, some run slow, but all are “tamed” by music. The scenes of zombies reacting to a garage band and swaying under a mirror ball to a ballad are fairly funny—as is the scene of a young zombie couple making out in a bathroom stall.
The film is ultimately an upbeat proposition, but there's good splatter, good hack-ups, and some fire scenes. It's fun, harmless, and the actors are cute and white. It won't keep the preteens awake at night, and it's a quick viewing. It doesn't make my top 20 list, and there isn't any kitschiness, or something that could redeem it in the eyes of a die-hard hardcore zombie fan, but it's not painful either. Dance of the Dead is not an awful film, but I'm glad bought the DVD from the bargain bin.
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