The Undead Have Never Looked So… Confused
There are bad movies, and then there’s Flick — a film so aggressively odd that it feels like someone fed Grease, Shaun of the Dead, and Twin Peaks into a blender and hit “liquefy.” Written and directed by David Howard, Flick is a British horror comedy (allegedly) about a 1950s teenager resurrected from the grave to find his now-elderly sweetheart and take revenge on those who wronged him. Sounds quirky, right?
Well, if you define “quirky” as “a cinematic car crash in a leather jacket,” then yes. Flick is the cinematic equivalent of a bad karaoke night that refuses to end — enthusiastic, off-key, and deeply embarrassing for everyone involved.
Plot? Barely.
Let’s start with the plot, though calling it that is generous. Johnny “Flick” Taylor (played by Hugh O’Conor, whose commitment is both admirable and slightly concerning) is a greaser from the 1950s who’s murdered, dumped in a river, and then somehow resurrected decades later. Why? Don’t worry, the movie doesn’t know either.
Now undead and still rocking his pompadour, Johnny crawls back into modern-day Wales, a land filled with confused locals, bad lighting, and Faye Dunaway. He’s on a mission: to find his old sweetheart Sally (Julia Foster), now a 62-year-old grandmother, and to kill whoever wronged him back in the day.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic for no discernible reason, Lieutenant Annie McKenzie (played by Dunaway, in one of those “I have bills to pay” performances) flies from Memphis to Wales to investigate the case. Apparently, Wales doesn’t have any police, so America had to get involved. She’s partnered with Sergeant Miller (Mark Benton), a bumbling sidekick who seems to think he’s in a sitcom.
What follows is part zombie movie, part love story, part fever dream, and entirely incoherent.
Resurrected and Rejected
Hugh O’Conor deserves a medal for keeping a straight face. Playing a lovesick zombie in a pink Cadillac, Johnny is supposed to be tragic and endearing. Instead, he’s like a goth Elvis impersonator with a head injury. He stumbles around the Welsh countryside mumbling “Sally…” like a ghost who forgot his lines.
O’Conor’s makeup makes him look less undead and more like he fell asleep in a tanning booth. His attempts at menace are undercut by the fact that he looks like he could lose a fight with a pigeon.
To be fair, Johnny’s journey is meant to be tongue-in-cheek — a sort of rockabilly Romeo wandering through modern life. But Flick can’t decide if it’s parody, pastiche, or just profoundly confused. It flirts with camp, dabbles in melodrama, then crashes headfirst into unintentional comedy.
Faye Dunaway: The True Horror
Let’s talk about Faye Dunaway. This is an Oscar-winning actress who’s shared the screen with legends, reduced here to a Southern-fried cop in sunglasses who appears to have wandered in from a CSI: Wales parody.
Her accent fluctuates wildly between Memphis drawl and mid-Atlantic confusion, like she learned her lines from a guide titled How to Sound American in 10 Minutes or Less. She delivers each line as though she’s trying to hypnotize the camera into forgetting she was once in Chinatown.
Her dialogue is pure gold in the worst way. Gems like “Sometimes the past won’t stay buried” and “This case don’t add up, sugar” are delivered with the conviction of someone already planning their escape from set. She spends much of the movie squinting into the distance, perhaps searching for her dignity.
If Dunaway took this role for a paycheck, she earned every penny — and probably a drink afterward.
The Supporting Cast: Stuck in Limbo
Mark Benton as Sergeant Miller provides comic relief, though the script seems allergic to humor. He’s the kind of bumbling sidekick who thinks finding a zombie is just a particularly bad Tuesday.
Julia Foster, as the aged version of Sally, gives a surprisingly heartfelt performance — which only makes the surrounding chaos more absurd. Watching her tenderly reunite with a rotting ex-boyfriend is weirdly touching… until you remember that her lover died when Eisenhower was president.
Michelle Ryan shows up as a nightclub dancer, possibly to remind viewers that somewhere, somehow, glamour still exists. Liz Smith and Terence Rigby pop in for cameos that suggest the film’s real curse was the casting director’s phone book.
The Tone: A Genre Salad Gone Bad
If you’re wondering what Flick actually is, you’re not alone. It’s part zombie flick, part musical nostalgia trip, part police procedural, and part arthouse experiment — all mashed together like leftovers from four different dinners.
One moment, Johnny’s killing gangsters with supernatural strength; the next, he’s wistfully staring at jukeboxes and ghostly reflections of his 1950s life. The soundtrack tries to capture retro charm but lands somewhere between Grease 2and elevator music.
David Howard clearly wanted to make a cult movie — something so weird and self-aware it becomes lovable. Instead, he made something so tonally confused it’s like watching a corpse try to tap dance.
Cinematography: Dead on Arrival
Shot across Wales, the film’s look alternates between “BBC crime drama” and “student film with access to a fog machine.” Every shot seems just slightly too long, as if the editor fell asleep mid-cut.
The color palette is gray, gloomy, and lifeless — which might be thematic if it didn’t also make the film feel like a funeral for enthusiasm. Even the scenes set in nightclubs or neon-lit diners look washed-out, as though the movie itself is too tired to care.
And then there’s the pacing. For a film about a zombie on a vengeance spree, Flick moves slower than the undead protagonist. Scenes drag on forever, filled with awkward pauses and dialogue exchanges that sound like rehearsal takes left in by accident.
The Music: A One-Note Obsession
Credit where it’s due: Richard Hawley’s soundtrack is the only part of Flick that shows any pulse. The retro rockabilly vibe fits the movie’s premise — for about 10 minutes. Then it becomes repetitive, looping endlessly until you start longing for silence.
There’s only so much melancholic twanging a person can take while watching Faye Dunaway interrogate Welsh villagers about a zombie in a pink car.
The “Camp” Defense
Defenders of Flick argue that it’s supposed to be bad — that it’s a self-aware camp homage to 1950s horror and pulp fiction. Nice try. Camp requires wit, style, and at least some awareness of its own absurdity. Flick just feels like it’s tripped over its own pompadour.
It’s too serious to be parody, too silly to be serious, and too slow to be fun. What’s left is a movie that mistakes confusion for creativity.
If Shaun of the Dead was a love letter to horror, Flick is a ransom note written in crayon.
Final Scene, Final Sigh
By the end, Johnny finds Sally, who understandably looks more bewildered than overjoyed. There’s a showdown, some vague redemption, and then mercifully, credits. The ghosts are laid to rest — and so, finally, is the audience’s patience.
You’d think a movie about love, death, and resurrection would have something profound to say. Flick’s big message seems to be: “Please let this end.”
Even the title feels like a dare — as if the director is reminding you that yes, technically, this is indeed a “flick.”
Final Verdict: Rest in Pieces
Flick is a fascinating failure — not because it’s ambitious, but because it’s baffling. It has all the ingredients of a cult classic — nostalgia, weirdness, Faye Dunaway in a fedora — but none of the charm or coherence that make bad movies fun.
It’s a horror-comedy without horror, a romance without chemistry, and a ghost story without a soul. Watching it feels like being haunted by a film that refuses to commit to existing.
1.5 out of 5 stars.
Half a star for effort, one for Faye Dunaway’s bewildered professionalism, and none for everything else. Flick might be about a zombie from the 1950s, but the real corpse here is the script.
