Review: ‘Zombie for Sale’ is light on laughs, heavy on heart -

It can be tough to perfect the correct horror-comedy blend. You want the viewer to buy into the absurdity without totally jumping the shark. Fortunately, Lee Min-jae’s Zombie for Sale, his debut feature, lives up to the hype. His cheeky, refreshing iteration of the Shaun of the Dead template packs on even more heart while commenting on corporate greed, desperation within a very dysfunctional family, and finding love in a hopeless place. The slap-stick style comedy doesn’t always stick the landing, but it’s the zombie rom-com you never knew you needed.

After a large pharmaceutical company begins illegal human experiments, testing out a promising diabetes medication, one of its clients (played by Jung Ga-ram) succumbs to a very bizarre virus strain possessing rejuvenation charms. Side-effects include all the usual classic zombie tropes: pale skin, teeth-baring snarl, lumbering footsteps, and absence of most mental faculties. Upon crawling out of a nearby manhole, the Zombie trudges along to the nearby town of Poongsan, where he encounters the Park family.

Park In-Hwan plays the patriarch, Man-duk, proprietor of the local gas station and a gambler who’ll do anything to get ahead. All he wants to do is vacation in Hawaii, but financial strains and the spiraling economy keep him locked in lower middle class. His two sons Joon-gul (Jung Jae-young) and Min-gul (Kim Nam-gil), and daugther Hye-gul (Lee Soo-kyung) round out his eccentric, possibly psychopathic, clan, along with Joon-gul’s very pregnant, prickly, and stern wife Nam-joo (Ji-won Uhm).

It’s a normal, ho-hum sort of day when Man-duk discovers the Zombie in a bathroom stall. Thinking him only a drunken hobo who needs to shower, he smacks the Zombie with a plunger ⏤ but he soon realizes the man standing there in shabby clothing is not a man at all. The Zombie sinks his choppers into Man-duk’s head, takes a chunk of flesh, and limp-runs out the front door and down the open highway.

Here’s where Min-jae and script co-writer Jung Seo-in upend your expectations. When Man-duk realizes the bite isn’t draining him of life, but instead making him much younger, he exploits the Zombie’s unnatural gifts to make a profit. Soon, countless older gentlemen in town beg Man-duk to let his new pet bite them, offering up any manner of monetary and liquid assets. The film, with a surprising near-two-hour runtime, banks hard into this whacko storyline, while also giving Hye-gul an unexpected and delightful love story with the Zombie. Yes, it’s as bizarro as it sounds; it’s ballsy move, as it perhaps may not land with all audiences.

Lee Min-jae’s Zombie for Sale swerves in the final act to straight-ahead apocalyptic mania before taking another hard-right again for the finale. The film layers on ham-fisted jokes sometimes, but they’re never a distraction to a downright enjoyable popcorn flick. More than anything, it has so much heart, you won’t be able to look away.

Zombie for Sale is currently streaming on the Arrow Video Channel and is also available on Blu-ray and Digital HD.