There are bad zombie movies. There are so-bad-they’re-good zombie movies. And then there’s Zombies Anonymous, also known by its first, more honest title: Last Rites of the Dead. This 2006 indie gore-fest tries to be a biting satire about discrimination, addiction, and identity, but mostly it feels like the hungover lovechild of Night of the Living Dead and a college theater group that just discovered eyeliner.
The Setup: Zombies, But Make Them Sad and Chatty
Here’s the pitch: What if zombies could walk, talk, and file HR complaints? Instead of being mute brain-munchers, they’re fully self-aware, depressed about being dead, and shunned by the living for smelling like spoiled ham. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers if the pod people just wanted a support group and maybe a coupon for deodorant.
Enter Angela (Gina Ramsden), who becomes a zombie when her jealous boyfriend Josh (Joshua Nelson) shoots her in the head. Instead of embracing her undead freedom—eating bad neighbors, haunting exes—Angela spends the runtime whining, trying zombie makeup called LookAlive, and confessing her shame to a support group called Hugs for the Mortally Challenged. Yes, that’s really the name. It sounds less like a horror film and more like a rejected Hallmark channel afterschool special.
The Villains: Hate Groups and Hippies
Of course, it wouldn’t be a zombie movie without someone playing dress-up with a shotgun. On one side, we have Josh and his bros, who join an anti-zombie militia run by The Commandant (Christa McNamee), a woman who delivers all her lines like she’s auditioning for a punk band that never got past garage practice. They behead zombies, they yell a lot, and they basically serve as the MAGA rally of the apocalypse.
On the other side, we’ve got The Good Mother Solstice (Mary Jo Verruto), a zombie cult leader who looks like a flower child that got lost on her way to Burning Man and ended up in a slaughterhouse. She runs a radical “zombie pride” group where the initiation ritual involves eating entrails like they’re hors d’oeuvres at a cocktail party. If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if a commune of zombies started a pyramid scheme for flesh smoothies, here’s your answer.
The Ex-Boyfriend From Hell (Literally)
Josh is the movie’s most tragicomic character. He murders Angela, stalks her after death, cries about how much he loves her, and then—after being shot—joins her as one of the undead. Picture your most toxic ex, now with maggots. Angela, who spends most of the film recoiling from him, eventually castrates him with a shotgun blast. Honestly? Relatable.
The Politics Nobody Asked For
The film clearly thinks it’s doing something profound. Zombies here aren’t monsters; they’re oppressed minorities. They’re bullied, discriminated against, and fired from jobs for smelling bad. They have support groups. They talk about their pain. They’re meant to be a metaphor for marginalized communities. But instead of social commentary, it feels like someone read half a sociology textbook and thought, What if Rosa Parks was undead?
The result is less “thought-provoking horror” and more “bad community theater workshop titled Prejudice, But With Entrails.”
The Gore Factor: Buckets of Ketchup
If you like your horror with gore, there’s plenty of it—but don’t expect quality. Intestines spill, heads roll, and brains splatter, but it all looks like leftovers from a Halloween clearance aisle. Watching Angela devour a disemboweled girl is supposed to be horrifying, but it feels more like the world’s least appetizing mukbang video.
By the time Solstice overdoses on her own human-flesh smoothie, the movie has gone so far off the rails it’s digging a tunnel under the tracks. It’s violent, it’s messy, but it’s not scary—it’s slapstick with more bile.
The Commandant’s Nervous Breakdown
One of the movie’s crown jewels of unintentional comedy is The Commandant’s arc. She loses her army, chops off her hair, dyes it blonde, shoots herself in the head, and disguises herself as a zombie. That’s right: in a world already full of zombies, she pretends to be one like a kid sneaking into an R-rated movie. She storms the compound like Rambo on bath salts, only to end up disemboweled and crawling around like a deflated piñata.
If you were hoping for a coherent villain, sorry. But if you wanted a cosplay tutorial for “punk zombie Karen,” you’re in luck.
The Big Finale: Love Hurts (And Also Explodes)
The climax features Angela strapped to a floor, drugged with “liquid flesh” smoothies while zombies chant like they’re at a yoga retreat for cannibals. Solstice dies from an overdose, The Commandant wipes out most of the zombie cult before being gutted, and Josh gets his leg blown off, his manhood removed, and his head blasted into pieces—all while still declaring his undying love for Angela.
If this is romance, count me out. It’s like The Notebook if Ryan Gosling had worms.
Angela, now free, tosses her makeup, embraces her gray zombie flesh, and smiles. Roll credits. That’s the grand message: Love yourself… even if you’re dead and smell like a wet dumpster.
Why This Movie Doesn’t Work
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Too many metaphors, not enough brains. Is it about race? Addiction? LGBTQ+ pride? Zombies as Holocaust survivors? The film tries all of them and nails none.
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Bad pacing. Scenes drag like a zombie’s leg, dialogue stumbles worse than the actors, and the whole thing could’ve been 40 minutes shorter.
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Performances. Ramsden looks perpetually confused, Nelson acts like he’s in a soap opera, and Verruto plays Solstice like she’s auditioning for a cult leader on SNL. The only one having fun seems to be The Commandant, and she’s still unbearable.
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Tone whiplash. It wants to be horror, satire, political allegory, and gross-out comedy all at once. Instead, it’s like a buffet where everything tastes like freezer-burned lasagna.
Final Thoughts
Zombies Anonymous isn’t the worst zombie movie ever made—it’s too ambitious for that. But it is one of the most misguided. It mistakes heavy-handed metaphors for substance and gore for terror. What could’ve been a sharp satire about prejudice and identity turns into a mess of entrails, awkward ex-boyfriend drama, and Jennifer Tilly knockoff cult leaders.
The dark humor here isn’t what the filmmakers intended—it’s what you, the viewer, create to survive watching it. Like laughing at a funeral where the casket won’t stay shut.
Verdict: Skip this undead therapy session. If you want zombies with brains, go watch Shaun of the Dead. If you want politics in your horror, try Get Out. And if you want entrails and cults, Society still does it better.
This one? Stick it back in the grave, pour concrete on top, and walk away.
