Reviewed by Toby Weidmann
Stars Danny Dyer, Noel Clarke, Stephen Graham, Lee Ingleby, Keith-Lee Castle,
Emil Marwa, Terry Stone, Christina Cole, Emily Booth, Alison Carroll | Written by Dan Schaffer
UK certification 18 | UK RRP £24.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 89 minutes | Directed by Jake West
Horror and comedy are two of the most difficult genres to get right – there’s nothing worse than a horror that fails to deliver chills or a comedy that’s about as amusing as a breeze block – so pairing the two together would seem like motion picture suicide. It’s probably the reason why there are so few truly memorable comedy horrors, as the rather tame Lesbian Vampire Killers illustrated, failing to live up to the Corden and Horne hype machine that surrounded it.
Fortunately, Doghouse has got the balance just right. Written by comic book scribe, Dan Schaffer (Dogwitch, Indigo Vertigo), and directed by Evil Aliens helmer, Jake West, Doghouse is everything LVK wanted to be, delivering both laughs and scares aplenty. It playfully points the finger of fun at horror, specifically zombie horror, conventions while also reveling in hefty doses of blood-splattering gore, and throws in biting (literally) satire on gender politics for good measure.
The basic set-up is not too dissimilar from LVK: six friends, each representing a male caricature (the shallow jack-the-lad, the depressed divorcee, the comic book geek, the new age man, the sensitive gay man and the bloke who’s more into hanging with the lads than spending time with his wife), find themselves stuck in a remote village that’s plagued, in this instance, by rabid female-only zombies. These “zombirds” in turn embody various male anxieties: the axe-wielding bride representing fear of commitment, the scissor-snipping hairdresser (played by genre favourite Emily Booth) is castration and so on. Let the battle of the sexes commence…
And a bloody battle it is too, as the flesh-hungry women feast on the assorted male contingent. We won’t ruin it by spoiling which of the guys make it out alive, but needless to say the group doesn’t leave the village unscathed. The humour is solid throughout, although it does sometimes border on the offensive, eliciting tuts rather than laughs, and it’s clear all the actors (a fine selection of hot British talent) had fun with their roles. Two scenes particularly stand out: the first featuring divorcee Vince (the ever-reliable Stephen Graham) and the nerdy Matt (Lee Ingleby in an excellent turn) figuring out ways to combat the zombie horde and contact their missing friends while trapped in the local toy shop; their solutions are both ingenious and typically male. The second sees Danny Dyer’s womanizer captured and tied up by a “fat zombird” and characteristically giving her the finger, but perhaps not in the way you would expect.
Overall, Doghouse is an accomplished addition to West’s growing horror oeuvre and although the story lulls on occasion, mostly to give fillip to the plot, and we’re not sure what the finale says about the male condition, it should satisfy anyone looking for the next Shaun of the Dead. It’s a different animal from Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s rom-zom-com, as the comedy is not as universal, appealing more to male sensibilities, but with its horde of marauding zombies and plenty of side-splitting jokes and gut-busting gore it inevitably draws comparison. Go see if you have the stomach for it.
EXTRAS *** A highly entertaining, and thorough, making of documentary that runs for almost an hour; three deleted scenes; a blooper reel; two trailers; two TV spots; a stilles gallery; and a pre-productioin gallery.