BLACK FRIDAY (2021)
Black Friday takes place on the most dreaded shopping day of the year for retail employees. Crazed customers are the least of the worries for the staff of the We Love Toys store, though, as a meteor shower has brought an extraterrestrial organism to Earth, one that takes over and assimilates other lifeforms, so it may grow. Now the embattled staff must fend off the worst kind of customer…alien-controlled zombie shoppers!
Flick is sadly a ho-hum effort directed routinely by Casey Tebo from a script by Andy Greskoviak. The premise could have been a lot of fun if they took the ball and ran with it, but a lot of it is the cast sitting around and bemoaning their fate while talking about their own personal issues. The characters are colorful, but all underused, such as Bruce Campbell’s retail nerd, store manager Jonathan, Ryan Lee’s hyper clean-freak Chris and Ivana Baquero’s sexy, spunky Marnie. Even Devon Sawa’s hero Ken is kind of bland. The film is supposed to be a horror comedy, but is neither funny enough to satisfy us with laughs, nor scary enough to satisfy the horror elements. The zombies are routine, despite their alien origin, and only the climatic full-size alien is somewhat interesting. FX range from some decent make-up and gore to cheesy CGI.
A sad disappointment, as anyone who has retail experience and has worked this dreaded event, knows this could have been a blast of fun and a welcome satirical look at retail’s biggest shopping day, had it been in more creative and enthusiastic hands. The opening credits of Krampus accomplishes this far better than this entire movie.
-MonsterZero NJ
MonsterZero NJ's Movie Madhouse 