Cockneys Vs. Zombies

Directed by: Matthias Hoene

Written by: James Moran

Recommended? Sure

Trigger Warning (for the movie, not the review): Violence, some sexist characters, and abysmally one-dimensional black characters

So there’s a movie called Cockneys Vs. Zombies. To use a British expression, it does exactly what it says on the tin. Cockneys (working-class people from the East End of London) end up fighting against a zombie infestation. It’s a comedy. You’re either going to watch it based on the title or you’re not.

But if somehow you’re fence-sitting on the issue, then let me just say: it kept me laughing.

One thing that draws me — and lots of people, I’d argue — to zombie movies is that after the zombie apocalypse, law and ethics are entirely disparate from one another. But Cockneys does us one better and protagonizes the lawless from the very beginning. Our bumbling heroes are off on a bank heist when the zombie swarms take over London. The other heroes are the residents of an old folks home, who are cartoonishly badass.

Snitches get it pretty bad in this movie too, which is sweet. And those backstory scenes… they’re good.

The one thing that this movie fucks up, in a pretty major way, is its race representation. I don’t even think it counts as a spoiler to tell you that the black man dies first, but he’s also a raving lunatic from his very first scene. He’s obsessed with violence and guns and is implausible in more or less every way. He’s also a vet and lobotomized, so I suppose you could make the case that it’s a “look at what war does to you” statement, but considering the rest of the movie’s startling whiteness, I’m not going to extend the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt on that count.