Zombillenium

Step by step I catch up with my 2017 animation list. This week it was time to see Zombillenium, which is NOT a French remake of Hotel Transylvania. Still, there are vampires, werewolves, zombies and family issues. The dead relatives are nothing like the ones in Coco either. It resembles a bit that old Nicolas Cage movie, in which Cage escapes Hell for his daughter. Here a father gets a strike in Hell.

The movie was based on Arthur de Pin’s graphic novel, and the author was also a writer and director, working together with Alexis Ducord. Like in MFKZ the story style reminds of a real-life action, yet benefitting from all the creativity one can find in animation.

I personally was impressed of the sincere mocking of almost every worn out movie genre. I mean – the Devil owns an amusement park, whre zombies and werewolves are put to work, while sparkling vampires, bishonen-style, are the one and only winning attraction (teenage girls vanity in a thing anywhere). An unsympathetic inspector tries to shut it down because the belts at the horror train are unreliable :D , but finds out the secret and is killed – so he is transformed into a zombie demon. Like in all movies about art or sport competitions, zombies and vampires fight for investments and ruling the park. Betrayals, neo-gothic-emo-romantic-melodic metal, a sexy witch, school brake and a strike in Hell make this animation terribly funny for the whole family, with almost no age restrictions. My favourite joke? – the three-headed hellhound is partly Pit bull, Doberman and Yorkshire terrier.

All these jokes and pranks wrap, of course, a moral lesson. As now it is too racist to speak about race discrimination and too sexist to mention gender discrimination, yet they tend to still exist, this is the new way to discuss them – with species-based discrimination. And Agatha Christie’s 10 little are spinning in their mass grave.

Honestly – it is a hell (see what I did here) of a movie. Iconography is quite characteristic and memorable. It discus adult topics in a childish way. It isn’t pretentious. What is there not to like?