Movies
[Review] Shudder’s ‘Yummy’ Unleashes Gory Fun in Familiar Zombie Comedy
Among the many film premieres displaced by SXSW’s pandemic-forced cancellation was Yummy, a gory European horror-comedy. The precise type that seemed ideal to watch with a crowd, perfect for its midnight movie slot. Luckily streaming platform Shudder has been on a roll lately rescuing festival selections from pandemic limbo and making them easily accessible for the horror fan. For this splatstick heavy zombie flick, Shudder provides the best possible home for Yummy to find its audience.
In the feature film debut by Lars Damoiseaux, a young couple travels to a shady Eastern European hospital for plastic surgery. Alison (Maaike Neuville) is desperate to receive a breast reduction, and her disapproving mother Sylvia (Annick Christiaens) tags along for a procedure of her own. Alison’s boyfriend Michael (Bart Hollanders) just wants to be supportive and propose to her the moment the timing is right. When Michael wanders into an abandoned section of the hospital and finds a gagged woman bound to a hospital bed, he frees her, not knowing she’s a zombie or that he’s just caused an outbreak within the hospital. Plastic surgery just got way more deadly and in the bloodiest way.
Nothing about Yummy offers anything new in the realm of zombies. All of the usual rules are the same, and all of the tried and true tropes are in play. Characters that act dumb and get themselves devoured? Check. Characters that get bitten and hide it from the group? Double check. From the outbreak to the film’s conclusion, it’s a straightforward outbreak story through and through. So, if you’ve grown frustrated by the zombie film, well, there’s not a lot here that will change your mind. Except, perhaps, that Damoiseaux wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel in Yummy, but instead offer a carnage fueled 90-minute escape that pays homage to splatstick masters like Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and even Troma.
Damoiseaux achieves this without the low budget aesthetics of the film’s influences or without veering too far into camp territory. Yummy looks great. Once the outbreak kicks into high gear, the hospital’s emergency lighting casts the place in stunning reds, blues, and oranges. The gore is the real star here. While the film doesn’t quite reach the same heights of Jackson’s early works, it sure endeavors to try. Many kills are off-screen, but there’s still plenty of blood-drenched moments that should appease gorehounds.
While the central conflict is about Alison and Michael attempting to survive and flee the hospital, an emerging love triangle consistently threatens to upstage it. Hospital staffer Daniel (Benjamin Ramon), a drug addict equally responsible for the outbreak, continuously works to make himself a safer option for Alison than the hemophobic Michael. Though, his hemophobia seems to exist solely for jokes that involve confusing the word with homophobia. Strangely, the conflict between Daniel, Alison, and Michael is strictly off-limits for the humor. Yummy consistently pokes fun of Alison’s large breasts, the sleazy ineptitude of the hospital, and the zombie situation at every conceivable scenario- expect an over the top penis gag, too. These three characters and their struggles are played stone serious, though, creating a strange balance of horror and comedy where the comedy isn’t always so clear.
In terms of zombie fare, Yummy feels years behind the curve. In other words, there’s nothing here that makes Damoiseaux stand apart from the rest or make it memorable in the wake of so many zombie films before. It is, however, an irreverent crowd-pleaser full viscera, entrails, nudity, and a super fun title sequence that’ll make you smile. Yummy may not explore any new ground in the subgenre, but it doesn’t seem remotely interested in trying, either. Instead, it merely wants to offer a fun escape, and create the biggest bloodbath possible in its brisk runtime.
Yummy premieres on Shudder on June 25, 2020.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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