On a family get away, Doctor Hunt (Billy Zane) finds himself in a small country town with his girlfriend, his daughter and her boyfriend. With their big city mind set they try and enjoy the ‘nouveau hick’ atmosphere. Sitting down for a country meal in the local diner, they all try to sample the delicacies provided but unfortunately, they missed out on the last of the hamburgers. Turns out this was for the best as the rest of the yokels who managed to snag one of the meaty treats starts to take a turn for the worst. You see, all the meat is locally grown. The problem is the farm providing the diner with it’s supply of beef was closed down a few years back for health issues and they took matters into their own hands to bring the cows back to health. Unfortunately for the carnivores in the group these burgers do nothing to appease their appetites; now they crave flesh!
Mad cow zombies? Well why not. It’s a common tactic for movies of any genre to play off of the headlines at any given time. Mad cow disease was a pretty big headline for awhile and it only makes sense that somebody would put the zombie spin on it. In The Mad they never outright say that this is mad cow disease; as a matter of fact they mention an ‘illness’ in the cattle and blame an illegal growth hormone for the problems. The implication is loud and clear however. From a horror nerd standpoint this isn’t a bad start. A zombie outbreak based loosely in reality helps to draw one into the situation. It’s just too bad that this was as close as we got to a good zombie flick.
While The Mad does shoot for its share of gore and scares, it is apparent from the get go that the goal was for laughs rather than horror. Packed with many one liners and jokes we’re left with a weak “Shaun of the Dead”. Sure, some of the yuks were pretty funny for the current scene, but there’s no flow between the jokes leaving the end product feeling disjointed and rather sloppy. The film also suffers from a case of overkill as well as instead of a quick drop and go for the laughs, they make sure to run them into the ground. At many times you may find yourself laughing heartily for a moment and then rolling your eyes waiting for them to move on. Humor problems aside however, Billy Zane does the best he can with the material and manages to make it work. Dopey and believable, he at least makes the humor groan worthy as opposed to making you just want to turn the DVD off and find something else to waste your time with.
There is very little here to make this one scare worthy although some of the blood and guts are well done. Most of the time you catch a fleeting glimpse at squishy scenes, how ever there are one or two worthy of the discerning gore hound. This is the key problem with this flick; we’re led to believe it’s a zombie/infected adventure. This is all well and good, but we need more that a couple of attacks thrown in. We see the infected stumbling about mooing quite often. Aside from the onset in the diner, they don’t do much in the way of attacking.
Not necessarily a waste of an hour The Mad is a movie you need to approach with low expectations. Bad jokes are the special of the day here; not zombie mayhem.
2.5 what happened to Billy Zane’s career’s out of 5
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