Doghouse

Eagle Entertainment

R4 DVD and Blu Ray

Doghouse is a new type of zombie film bringing together a battle of the sexes type horror comedy like Lesbian Vampire Killers with a down-n-dirty laddish sense of humour and lots and lots of guts and gore.

The film opens with a bio of each of the main characters with an emphasis on clashes with partners and friends. They are all gathering to help one of their mates, Vince get over a rather nasty divorce and meet at a local pub and then plan to set off to a remote village for a weekend of drinking and male bonding. The actors include Danny Dyer, Stephen Graham, Noel Clarke, Terry Stone, Christina Cole who all pull off their roles rather successfully; most are well known within U.K. films and TV.

When they arrive things are not as they expected, the town seems deserted, there is a strange pagan store on the main street and mutilated military bodies are scattered throughout the village. As they retire to the pub they find there is no one to serve them but this is a minor inconvenience compared to what comes next. It seems the women of the town have been infected by some sort of virus and become zombirds, wild rampaging cannibals with a hunger for male flesh. They cannot easily escape as the infection has also transformed Ruth (whom they call Candy), their bus driver.

This is a quirky and outrageous film which takes the battle of the sexes into full blown horror territory. The comedy is somewhat uneven but there is some great wit and superb one-liners. I especially like when Dyer wonders if they ought to be killing these dangerous but once beautiful women and he’s told, “This is not the time to stop objectifying women.”

The creatures embody every possible female monster stereotype including a hairdresser with dangerous shears, a truly huge warrior witch with a sword, a dentist with a drill, a very bloody bride, barmaids and schoolgirls.

Doghouse is another genre horror from director Jake West who made the rather overlooked science fiction horror Evil Aliens which I rather thought a lot of. This is certainly a step forward for West and certainly offers enough scares and gore to make it a very impressive horror film as well as an eccentric comedy.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 4 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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