Among the many film premieres displaced by SXSW’s pandemic-forced cancellation was Yummy, a gory European horror-comedy. The precise type that seemed ideal to watch with a crowd, perfect for its midnight movie slot. Luckily streaming platform Shudder has been on a roll lately rescuing festival selections from pandemic limbo and making them easily accessible for the horror fan. For this splatstick heavy zombie flick, Shudder provides the best possible home for Yummy to find its audience.
In the feature film debut by Lars Damoiseaux, a young couple travels to a shady Eastern European hospital for plastic surgery. Alison (Maaike Neuville) is desperate to receive a breast reduction, and her disapproving mother Sylvia (Annick Christiaens) tags along for a procedure of her own. Alison’s boyfriend Michael (Bart Hollanders) just wants to be supportive and propose to her the moment the timing is right. When Michael wanders into an abandoned section of the hospital and finds a gagged woman bound to a hospital bed, he frees her, not knowing she’s a zombie or that he’s just caused an outbreak within the hospital. Plastic surgery just got way more deadly and in the bloodiest way.
Nothing about Yummy offers anything new in the realm of zombies. All of the usual rules are the same, and all of the tried and true tropes are in play. Characters that act dumb and get themselves devoured? Check. Characters that get bitten and hide it from the group? Double check. From the outbreak to the film’s conclusion, it’s a straightforward outbreak story through and through. So, if you’ve grown frustrated by the zombie film, well, there’s not a lot here that will change your mind. Except, perhaps, that Damoiseaux wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel in Yummy, but instead offer a carnage fueled 90-minute escape that pays homage to splatstick masters like Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and even Troma.
Damoiseaux achieves this without the low budget aesthetics of the film’s influences or without veering too far into camp territory. Yummy looks great. Once the outbreak kicks into high gear, the hospital’s emergency lighting casts the place in stunning reds, blues, and oranges. The gore is the real star here. While the film doesn’t quite reach the same heights of Jackson’s early works, it sure endeavors to try. Many kills are off-screen, but there’s still plenty of blood-drenched moments that should appease gorehounds.
While the central conflict is about Alison and Michael attempting to survive and flee the hospital, an emerging love triangle consistently threatens to upstage it. Hospital staffer Daniel (Benjamin Ramon), a drug addict equally responsible for the outbreak, continuously works to make himself a safer option for Alison than the hemophobic Michael. Though, his hemophobia seems to exist solely for jokes that involve confusing the word with homophobia. Strangely, the conflict between Daniel, Alison, and Michael is strictly off-limits for the humor. Yummy consistently pokes fun of Alison’s large breasts, the sleazy ineptitude of the hospital, and the zombie situation at every conceivable scenario- expect an over the top penis gag, too. These three characters and their struggles are played stone serious, though, creating a strange balance of horror and comedy where the comedy isn’t always so clear.
In terms of zombie fare, Yummy feels years behind the curve. In other words, there’s nothing here that makes Damoiseaux stand apart from the rest or make it memorable in the wake of so many zombie films before. It is, however, an irreverent crowd-pleaser full viscera, entrails, nudity, and a super fun title sequence that’ll make you smile. Yummy may not explore any new ground in the subgenre, but it doesn’t seem remotely interested in trying, either. Instead, it merely wants to offer a fun escape, and create the biggest bloodbath possible in its brisk runtime.
Yummy premieres on Shudder on June 25, 2020.
