Director: Gregory Lamberson
MPAA Rating: NR
Run Time: 87 Minutes
As a recovering, headbanging metal kid, one who is far removed from my embarrassing high-school years of black-clad outfits, long unkempt hair and passive rebellion, I get waves of secondhand embarrassment from the pitiful zombie revenge romp Johnny Gruesome.
Based on an allegedly beloved horror novel, written by Greg Lamberson…who also unwisely serves as director, it is almost impressive how he has somehow crafted a worse film than Stephen King’s own directorial debut, Maximum Overdrive, a film the author hilariously cannot recall making, on account of his exorbitant cocaine abuse during production.
Perhaps, on paper, this half-baked, undead slasher about a metalhead rising from his unjust grave and taking it out on the living works, but I have my doubts. I couldn’t imagine reading 340 pages of this creatively bankrupt concept when I could barely last through the laborious cinematic treatment that somehow barely reaches feature length anyway.
Our titular rebellious rocker Johnny “Gruesome” Grissom departs from this mortal coil through unfathomably contrived circumstances, which kinda implicate his best friends as responsible and gives him the motivation to return and wreak his unholy revenge. Premise wise, this seems cut and dry, and Johnny is even unceremoniously murdered within 10 minutes. But for whatever reason, Lamberson artificially prolongs this poorly justified revenge plot and forces his zombie teen to plod and bide his time for no discernible reason.
Even though we’re told he was ripped from the afterlife by his unwavering lust for vengeance, Johnny superfluously targets a jock he doesn’t like, a principal who suspended him, his father and his teacher – all in these bloodless, tedious scenes that seemingly fail to elicit any shock or laughs out of an audience.
His former crew (i.e., those actually responsible) eventually get the impression something is off after the innocent bodies start piling up and begin to consider the unthinkable, As revenge thrillers go, Lamberson has created a deeply disjointed one that critically lacks that strong sense of a moral injustice that is supposed to get me invested.
It doesn’t help that making an honest-to-god zombie film in 2018 is so beyond passé that only the most imaginative, technically proficient or genre-destabilizing efforts could ever hope to register with a public now sick to death on this genre’s oversaturation. Johnny Gruesome falsely assumes its of cribbing I Know What You Did Last Summer with an undead twist and metalhead chaser allows it to stand out, but if anything, it makes it more derivative and desperate in the attempt. The film fails on any and all fronts that might’ve justified releasing it now, two years after Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan made us all foolishly believe there was still life in this genre.
The cast is universally stiff and lifeless, the practical effects perfunctory and underutilized, the computer effects somehow worse than that, and, just to add insult to injury, the soundtrack is packed with off-brand metal tunes that sound like they were sourced from your local dive bar’s open-mic night. I would say this film could have potentially worked in an abbreviated form as an episode of Tales from the Crypt, but even that is being charitable to Lamberson and frankly disrespectful to The Cryptkeeper.
Speaking of, I find it fascinating how difficult Johnny Gruesome is to parse whether or not it is simple horror or just the failed result that naturally comes with the hubris of thinking that one can accomplish horror comedy. The script is occasionally peppered with bad facsimiles of jokes and what with the ludicrous premise one would assume there is fun to be had with a metal loving zombie killer.
Yet the only time the film ever approaches a laugh is when it’s quality and obvious mistakes approach parodic levels of bad. And lacking the budget and ingenuity to do anything in the other direction of horror, Johnny Gruesome is stranded in a no-man’s land of pure disappointment.
I stand truly dumbfounded not only by the fact that this was based on a beloved novel, but also because the author himself was primarily responsible for bringing it to the screen. We can only assume then that this is precisely how he envisioned it panning out. This is the adaptation as the writer intended it to be, and I don’t know if that says more about the source material or the debuting author-cum-director.
