Halloween is just around the corner, pumpkin spice-flavoured everything adorns the restaurants and stores, and both horror games and horror movies are crawling out of their respective purgatories to try to spook you in the night. Aside from the collection of horror games that we’ve been playing for Game Usagi Plays, we were given the opportunity to watch a horror movie (from Canada no less) before it hits theatres next Wednesday, Oct. 30th. Boasting intriguing actors like Christopher Lloyd (from Back to the Future, but also more recently from the likes of The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure and Piranha 3DD) and Kevin McDonald (from Kids in the Hall) in addition to credentials like “Canada’s first stereoscopic live-action 3D feature film” and that it “confirms April Mullen as the youngest and first female to direct a live action fully stereoscopic 3D feature film”. Does Dead Before Dawn 3D enjoy a place among the finer horror/comedy movies or does it ironically fall victim to the seeming curse on Canadian productions that has long kept them in the land of painful mediocrity? Read on to see whether or not this movie left us dead before dawn.
I’d first like to address the bold PR statements hovering around the movie as I think they’re telling of some of the larger challenges this movie faces. As a rule the more qualifying words that need to be packed into a promotional statement the less impressive it becomes, this is especially true when the word “first” is thrown into the mix. Just because you’re the first at something doesn’t make you the best, it doesn’t even necessarily make you good. This applies just as much to media productions as it does to Internet comments. In essence, saying that Dead Before Dawn 3D is the “first stereoscopic live-action 3D feature film” from Canada says very little indeed, and not only because “stereoscopic” and “3D” imply one another. The fact that they have to make that claim is almost sad because you can just picture them going through a list before ending up at that phrase:
“Well, we’re not the first feature film ever… Not the first live-action feature film either. There have been other 3D feature films before, surely. There’s even a lot of live-action feature films in 3D, rats! We need to bring the scope down somehow, but how?! I’ve got it. We’re the first live-action 3D feature film shot in Canada, perfect. Oh, but what if people aren’t clear on the fact that you need to have two functioning eyes to see the 3D? Then we’re Canada’s first stereoscopic live-action 3D feature film! Is someone writing this gold down???”
In harsh reality this isn’t even the first low budget “stereoscopic” 3D movie Christopher Lloyd has been in. When I read that the movie’s director (and incidentally one of its more competent actresses) April Mullen was the “youngest and first female to direct a live, etc.” I was rather impressed and thought “Wow, if she’s only like 20 or something that’s sort of impressive.” In reality Miss Mullen is 32 and more or less just incidentally the first/youngest female director of a 3D film, the fact that she decided to use a more expensive camera hardly puts her above her young female director “peers” like say Lena Dunham who has won a Director’s Guild Award and two Golden Globes for work that she did starting at the age of 24. I in no way want to besmirch Mullen’s achievements, as directing movies at all as a Canadian woman in her early 30’s is an achievement in itself in such a male and American-dominated industry, but the fact that they feel they need to bandy these trifling things about is telling enough that these movie makers are not wholly confident in their product.
So, I really didn’t know what to expect going in to Dead Before Dawn 3D. On one hand I still have a faint glimmer of respect for Christopher Lloyd, a good deal more respect for Kevin McDonald, and April Mullen seems like a genuinely nice person looking to make good movies, but on the other hand everything you see about the movie before you actually see it screams “The Asylum movie wannabe” like the very poorly designed movie posters/website/PR materials, uninspiring trailers, April Mullen’s past directing credits with an average Rotten Tomatoes Audience score of just 24% and the horribly suspicious focus of people on the trivial “firsts” the movie achieved instead of important things like acting and plot.
With all of those factors working very aggressively against Dead Before Dawn 3D (DBD3D) being even remotely tolerable I have to say that I was surprised when it turned out to be just sort-of mediocre. Mediocrity is not an achievement for most films, but for DBD3D it’s like a gold star that it proudly displays on its forehead. Those coming into this movie looking for a laughably terrible movie like Birdemic will be disappointed, as will those looking for a purposely bad one like Paranormal Entity 4: The Awakening. While it should also never even be mentioned in the same breath as the always excellent Shaun of the Dead (or even the less enduring Zombieville), DBD3D does enough right that it manages to stay teetering at the edge of complete garbage without actually falling in. This avoidance of complete dreadfulness is thanks largely to the unexpectedly decent performances from the movie’s main players like Devon Bostick and April Mullen (naturally Christopher Lloyd and Kevin McDonald fared quite well too in spite of what they had to work with).
The purposely absurd plot of the movie in which a young group of friends/acquaintances jokingly invent a curse involving demon zombies (which they artlessly term “zemons”) that comes true is not unique, clever, or wry enough to hold its own or even serve as a competent parody of the horror genre. Tired horror tropes are spread thickly throughout the movie without capable enough execution to elevate them to a plane of satire or self-reference where they would seem like they were used for more than just their own sake. Obvious jokes that would have been funnier in the hands of a more talented crew usually just come across as fake or shabby. As a lover of horror, comedy, and horror/comedy I found that I was never laughing or scared enough at the movie’s proceedings to bring the experience above a passive baseline entertainment level.
Considering all of the shoddy advertising surrounding it, Dead Before Dawn 3D is nowhere near as bad of a movie as it seems to be at first, but it also missteps so often that you’ll wonder how it does somehow end up getting to its destination. Even though there are a great deal of far better horror, comedy, and horror/comedy movies out there, some genuine performances and okay jokes give Dead Before Dawn 3D just enough of an undead pulse to keep it from being entirely unwatchable. When you see it in the bargain bin at Canadian Tire for a toonie you’ll probably get more value out of it than your next Double-Double, but otherwise Dead Before Dawn 3D should be nearer the bottom of your Halloween movie list as it offers very little you can’t see better executed elsewhere.
4.2/10
A copy of the movie was provided to us by its publisher