Thursday, December 30, 2010

Masters Of Horror: Homecoming - 3/5

Directed By Joe Dante (known for "Piranha", "The Howling", and "Gremlins")

David Murch (Tenney) is one of America's best political spokespersons. When the President is up for re-election during a war that is widely unpopular, he makes a statement on air wishing that if the soldiers could come back and voice their opinions that he would. Suddenly these soldiers are coming back from the dead to vote in the election. Now Tenney is torn on how to the handle the situation by getting his President back in office without pissing off an entire army of the undead. It's going to be a rough election year.

Political satire films and horror aren't the best of bedfellows on an everyday basis. This is in part due to their inability to focus on what to be (is it horror, comedy, or a message film?) and many films fall apart at the attempts to navigate the genres (like "Zombies Of Mass Destruction" for example). Joe Dante's "Masters Of Horror" episode, "Homecoming" does a decent job at taking on the burden and doing it well. It's a fairly well crafted story about a zombie uprising based on political means and when it wants to can be pretty damn hilarious in its over the top approach to "politics". At times it does get a bit too cheesy (David's back story flashback is one such moment) and it does intend to smash your face with some political ideologies about war. Other than that, and of course its lack of actual Horror to the film, "Homecoming" strikes a fairly solid episode for the series. It's a fun watch, but compared to the true horror episodes that the series started off with it tends to fall just a bit short.

Written By Matt Reifschneider

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