Just when you thought nothing more could be done with the zombie movie sub-genre, along comes a group of boy scouts and suddenly, we’re heading back into battle. With Paramount putting this new horror-comedy – Scouts vs. Zombies – together, writer/director Christopher Landon will be hoping that the appearance of beloved comedy actor, David Koechner, will help set the kind of tone necessary to bring a new edge to this familiar concept.
Centring on a small American town, Scouts vs. Zombies sees a group of Boy Scouts try to defend their neighbourhood from a zombie attack. Joseph Morgan (The Vampire Diaries), Tye Sheridan (Mud) and Logan Miller (Growing Up Fisher) are already on board, and they will now be joined by Koechner, who will be playing the Scout Leader.
No stranger to the horror-comedy arena, David Koechner featured in Piranha 3DD in 2012, as well as being a well-known figure following his work on the Anchorman movies, and TV shows such as The Office.
Just as our multiplexes are awash with superhero films, along with the ‘Found Footage’ sub-genre, zombie films have become something of a go-to gimmick for Hollywood in recent years. Having been a staple of the horror film for decades, zombie-themes have been spreading to the mainstream, generating such big screen fare as 28 Days Later, Shaun Of The Dead, and Zombieland. The TV show The Walking Dead catapulted zombies to the forefront of everyone’s warped imagination when it began airing in 2010, and since then, we have been facing a cinematic zombie apocalypse of our own – with Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies, The Cabin In The Woods, Cockneys vs. Zombies, ParaNorman, Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, REC 3: Genesis, the Resident Evil franchise, Despicable Me 2 and World War Z, among others.
Personally, I’d like to see zombie films graduate to the next level. The only way a zombie flick would catch my eye these days is if it was Superheroes vs Zombies in a ‘Found Footage’ format. Koechner could be the one running the camera, lobbing verbal zingers onto the apocalyptic, super-sized battlefield. Until somebody writes that guaranteed box office smash hit, however, fans of the horror-comedy genre will have to make do with Scouts vs. Zombies, which begins shooting on May 8.
