IHeart "IZombie"

IZombie (2015)

TV-14

Starring Rose McIver, Malcolm Goodwin, Rahul Kholi, Robert Buckley, David Anders

Created by Diane Ruggiero and Rob Thomas

The Story:

Dr. Olivia Moore (McIver) goes to a party at the insistence of her boyfriend, Major (Buckley) who wants her to have a good time. Bad idea, Major. The boat party turns into a massacre, and Liv is scratched by some crazy dude (Anders) and when she wakes up, she's craving brains!  That's right, Liv is now a zombie. She leaves her chosen profession behind and goes to work at the morgue working for Ravi (Kholi) and where she has ample supplies of fresh brains to work with. One apparent zombie side effect is that the brains give Liv bits and pieces of memories from the consumed. She uses this nifty trick to help Detective Babineaux (Goodwin) solve their murders.

The heir apparent to Psych, we have a "psychic" helping the police force solve murders with the help of a funny guy in the morgue. Sure, that's stretching both premises slightly to make my point, but I saw it, and therefore on some subliminal level, it must surely exist. :)

This entry on the CW is, surprise surprise, based on a comic book. Again, that's news to me since I've long ago left reading them on a regular basis.

That it's a good show that I really enjoyed, these thoughts come as no surprise to me as most comics have great stories, ideas and a solid premise behind them.

IZombie is no different, and I'll have to give a shout out to my oldest daughter who discovered this show and converted the whole family into fans.

A tremendously talented cast who can run the gamut of hilarious, terrified, forlorn and just about everything in between, with ease and grace.

Kudos to everyone involved, especially the creators for coming up with another creative take on the zombie mythos and giving us a new (and frankly, terrifying) way that zombies behave.

Frankly, I really enjoyed almost the entire first season.

However...

The Final Episode threw one too many "hey, wouldn't this be a great way to end the season and keep them looking forward to next year?" coincidences and cliffhangers at the audience.

After a season of slow building, the kitchen sink approach fell a little flat for me at the end.

But the 12 episodes in front of that were pretty tremendous.

 Final Grade: B+

Twas the Weekend Before Halloween... "The Revenant"

There are apparently worse things than dying...

The Story:

Bart Gregory (David Anders) is a soldier in the military who gets killed.  However, he winds up coming back to life, and with the help of his best friend Joey (Chris Wylde), he decides that it wouldn't be so bad if he killed bad people and used their blood to keep him alive.  Theoretically, he's doing the rest of the world a service.

Ah, the best laid plans of the undead...

I'm torn.

I'd been on such a great streak with all of the Zom-Coms this year, this one seemed to be heading down similar territory.

Instead of going for full-on vampire or zombie, they used the old myths of the Revenants, corpses that came back from the dead and needed to feast on blood to stay alive.

However, the movie then changes the tone by having the best friend get turned also.

Okay, now we have buddy revenants out for a good time...

But then they come back to the original love story from the beginning...

And the movie seems to lose direction...



Then boredom began to set in.

: /

And don't get me started on the meandering,  "totally lost their way" 3rd act.

It's like a movie that had no idea how it wanted to end, or find a way to execute it.

The final decisions aren't bad, and partly clever.  The beat-around-the-bush way of getting there though downgraded a movie that started off with a fairly strong premise.

Ah well.

Final Grade: C

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: Have to say no to both.

But tomorrow, the scary weekend is redeemed!