Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)

Attempting to salvage a botched bank-job, a group of robbers find their efforts interrupted by a viral outbreak and must fend off the swarm of zombies infesting London's East End to save their grandfather and get to safety.

This turned out to be quite an enjoyable and entertaining zombie effort. One of the biggest pluses here is the fact that this one manages to contain a large portion of goofy and plain hilarious moments that are flat-out funny for just how absurd this one gets while attempting to play it straight. The way the robbery gets botched, the arguing between the family, the zombie assault on the retirement home and the eventual charge down to their escape is all quite funny for how blatantly goofy it's portrayed yet comes off as completely relevant in the way it transpires and ends up making these scenes better by not writing the movie around the jokes but instead working the comedy into the story. This truly funny comedy makes the action all the better as there's a real massive amount of action with plenty of shoot-outs, including the bank-robbery itself as well as the charge through the streets after the retirement home visit to holding off the creatures in the safe house with the hostages being forced into action to save themselves, as well as the different encounters along the escape route in the streets filled with the zombies which just really gets all the high-notes here with the mad-collision of bullets flying everywhere, zombies getting shot to pieces or blasted to chunks and the victims being pulled apart and devoured in nearly everyone of these encounters which makes for a huge gore quotient to go along with the comedy and thrilling action. While these make the film quite entertaining, there's one rather important factor holding this down which is the fact that there's a rather convoluted series of plot-points that seem to go nowhere and bring more people into this that don't need to be there to begin with. These here make this one fall slightly, but overall not enough from being one of the better zombie efforts recently.

Rated R: Extreme Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

Fmovies: I've grown quite allergic to the terms zombie-comedy, and especially to the allegedly cool slang name "zomedy", because we horror fanatics are literally overloaded with movies about the Living Dead that are supposed to be horrific and hilarious at the same time. In reality, however, the vast majority of them are just downright dull, uninspired and irritating. Ever since the British cult hit "Shaun of the Dead", it seems like every (young?) aspiring film director assumes that he/she can make a horror comedy even though these two remain the hardest genres to put into a blender together. Therefore I was rather skeptical when I went to see "Cockneys vs. Zombies" at a local horror festival here in Belgium. The idea sounded good, the trailer looked mighty fine and the cast features a handful of names that even make the most mediocre movie tolerable (Alan Ford from "Snatch" and Honor "Pussy Galore" Blackman) but still … it remained a zomedy! It took me more or less five minutes to put all my skepticism aside, though, because the movie starts out amazingly and I immediately got sucked in. The intro sequence and particularly the awesomely animated opening credits, guided by the magnificent song "What's that coming over the hill is it a monster?" by The Automatic, set the basis for an exhilarating, fast-paced and blood-spurting horror adventure. Admittedly the script features many clichés, stereotypes and redundant melodramatic moments, but overall seen is director Matthias Hoene's approach fresh and inventive. In Cockney country, the heart of working class East London, construction workers are building a gigantic apartment complex for which several traditional monuments have to be demolished, including the old folk's home of Granddad Ray Maguire and his friends. His offspring plans to rob a bank so that he doesn't have to move away from the area, but something else also interferes with the construction works… a zombie invasion! When the workers stumble upon ancient catacombs underneath the city, the region is quickly overrun by thousand of zombies. The bank robbers battle their way back to the retirement home as fast as they can, but the old timer prove themselves still tough enough to stand up against the undead. "Cockneys vs. Zombies" (don't you just love it when the title is, in fact, the entire plot?) is a straightforward and largely unpretentious zombie romp that delivers what you expect (or hope for). There are various flaws, like for example the screenplay refuses to sacrifice any real pivot characters and overdoes the melodrama a bit near the climax, but these are widely compensated through ingenious little plot aspects and the excessive gore effects. Certain sequences already qualify as instant classic in my book. For example, you haven't seen a zombie chase until you witness the race between a pensioner with a walking frame and a traditionally slow-sauntering rotting corpse. Or, how to kill a zombie with a metal plate in his head? And then for the obvious biggest trump of the film I'd like to refer to the title. The genuine Cockney characters and the delicious rhyming slang dialogs are the elements that truly distinguish the film from the others. Alan Ford must be the coolest Cockney since Sid Vicious and, as expected, he steals the show in every sequence he's in.

OMG my boys and I watched this last night and it was hilarious, totally unexpected but so freaking funny, it was pretty gory and the very first bit of gore had this old geezer grossed out but then turned into standard zombie blood fest. I thought yet another crap zombie movie but this was different, there are parts in this movie when I had tears of laughter rolling down my face - two scenes in particular had me laughing out loud...so unexpected... it's not going to win any awards (except maybe comedy of the year!) but it's just so funny, however if you love The Walking Dead then don't watch this because it will spoil that series forever, you will never see a zombie in the same light again! So freaking funny!

The old geezers with their cursing are marvellous - grey beards rule... and how the hell did they get Honor Blackman and Richard Briers to star in this. Do go to see it, it's very very British humour and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Cockneys vs Zombies fmovies. Quite why anyone thought that the movie-going public needed another low budget zombie-themed comedy I don't know, but that is exactly what we have with 2012's Cockneys vs. Zombies, a simplistic and intermittently funny film, albeit one that is so derivative of other, far better efforts that it's chiefly memorable for so often drawing attention to its own pointlessness. It's a cliché already, given the numerous references made in the other reviews posted here, but it really does feel as though someone took a look at Shaun of the Dead and Snatch and thought 'I know, a film mashing these two hits up would make a ton of cash!', and set about doing just that. It is an unfocused film, at its most bearable when it is directly ripping off it's 'inspirations', though there is nothing here to match the inspired verbal sparring in Guy Ritchie's gangland corkscrew thrillers or the relentless in-jokes of the Simon Pegg-starring 'zom-rom-com'. With its protagonists a group of novice bank robbers, the film is able to both focus on the supposedly fertile ground of East London's criminal element, and at the same time, heavily arm them in readiness for the zombie attacks that dominate the second half of the movie. There are a couple of standout bits of black comedy that give you a jolt because they are in such bad taste (the zombie baby, for instance), but these are offset with far too many other scenes which descend into tedious melodrama. As to the cast, they are largely ineffectual, and quite what potential Richard Briers, one of our most respected actors, saw in either the film or his part is unclear; his doddering old duffer barely makes an impression and his one supposedly hilarious comic set-piece falls flat because it is so poorly paced (perhaps he thought that since his old Ever Decreasing Circles co-star Penelope Wilton turned up in Shaun, he had to do something similar?). Snatch's Alan Ford is clearly the 'marquee' actor in the film, as his screen persona pretty much personifies the vision of East London the movie is supposedly built around; however, despite Ford swearing in his distinctive accent, there really isn't anything else to bed the story into East London at all – it could just as easily have been called 'Scousers vs. Zombies' and been set on the Wirral with Ricky Tomlinson in Ford's role. Whilst definitely a charismatic and screen-dominating figure (and nobody else in the film has half as much to do), Ford is such a one-note actor that he makes Ray Winstone look like Alec Guinness by comparison. Honor Blackman also barely registers, whilst former Eastender Michelle Ryan's entire tedious performance and appearance (would-be bad-ass putting wimpy males to shame) are just ripping-off the genuinely talented Emma Stone's turn in the infinitely superior US effort Zombieland. Don't bother, really.

So Cockneys vs Zombies. I don't know if you have to be Cockney to find this flick amusing, I however didn't. Not able to compete with movies like Zombieland and Shaun of the dead, i found the movie weak, with a bad plot, and the special effects very bad. i seriously thought about turning the movie off more than once. i don't know if it was a low budget movie, even the funny parts of the movie failed to entertain me, and i normally really fond of Zombieflick. The acting was OK, and the casting was so so with a few flaws, the Mental mickey character wasn't really mental enough in my eyes.

The only thing i found amusing was the into and the theme song. OH and i hate when movies use "pretend" bullits where actors have to pretend to fire their weapons..

This film was both funny and bloody! If Guy Ritchie directed a zombie film this would be the result. A funny LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS type of Comedy/Horror. The plot is mostly original and the action is bloody and gory in scenes which makes this film fun to watch. It's not quite SHAUN OF THE DEAD but it's very close. There are a few familiar faces for those who have seen a lot of the great British Guy Ritchie type films. There are some great kill scenes too. I found myself watching the movie and seeing a few comparisons to the for-mentioned comedy/horror film. This will be, in my opinion, another cult classic in years to come. I give it an 8.5 out of 10.