EAT BRAINS LOVE
Written by Mike Herro, David Strauss; adapted from the original novel UNDEAD WITH BENEFITS by Jeff Hart
Directed by Rodman Flender
This zombie rom-com throws together the unlikely pairing of stoner, lazy good-for-nothing dreamer Jake Stephens and the hottest – in his opinion - girl in school, Amanda Blake on a flesh-eating road trip. Like IT FOLLOWS the danger comes from having sex with a carrier, but instead of cursing you with the dilemma of whether to pass it further on, EAT, BRAINS, LOVE’s contagion makes you what we all recognise as a zombie. In a twist on the format, the contagion can be controlled to certain degree and only come out in moments of real hunger and/or stress – it’s as if infected people were like milder versions of Dr David Banner or Dr Jekyll. But this film isn’t wanting to delve into battles with your id, this is about a want for human flesh and Jake’s unrequited feelings for Amanda. Hot on their tail as they race to nowhere but far away, is Cass, a teen psychic sent by the government's top-secret Necrotic Control Division to track them down. She takes a shine to Jake and out of the most unlikely pairing, you’ve now the absolutely insane love triangle of love triangles while Cass purports to be hoping to find a cure to this STD epidemic.
The switch back to looking perfectly normal means zombies hide in plain sight and some, like lesbian couple Summer and Grace, are making a fist of fitting in – albeit with meal times being their extreme exception to that rule.
EAT, BRAINS, LOVE is a tame, cartoon of a horror. It plays for laughs much more that it plays for scares,
EAT, BRAINS, LOVE is a tame, cartoon of a horror. It plays for laughs much more that it plays for scares, and it really wants you to root for Jake and Amanda’s love affair while they munch their way through the people they meet. Finding a cure seems like it doesn’t matter so much. The story is skewed towards fleshing out – pun intended – Jake’s character more than hers. Which is a shame as Amanda and Cass seemed, on the surface at least, to be the much more interesting people and exploring their points of view of the catastrophe beyond Jake’s influence might have given us something new to consider.
