Photograph
courtesy La Biennale di Venezia
Venice
71: Film Festival – Burying the Ex – Joe Dante. Burying the Ex is a romantic
zombie movie directed by Joe Dante and stars Anton Yelchin, Ashley Greene,
Alexandra Daddario and Oliver Cooper. Burying
the Ex follows Max, all-around nice guy and classic movie buff, and his
overbearing but incredibly sexy girlfriend, Evelyn. Their relationship takes a
nosedive after Max invites Evelyn to move in and she turns out to be a
controlling, manipulative nightmare. Max realizes it’s time to call it quits,
but he doesn’t want to hurt her so he stays the course. Fate steps in when
Evelyn is involved in a freak accident and dies, leaving Max guilty, single but
eventually ready to mingle. Several weeks later, Max has a chance encounter
with Olivia, a cute and funny girl who also loves movies and who just might be
his soul mate. But that same night, Evelyn becomes the “Ex Who Wouldn’t Die”—
she’s back from the grave as a dirt-smeared undead (and horny) corpse, and
she’s crazier about Max than ever. But crazy is the operative word, and Max’s
life is turned upside down as his decomposing “Girlfriend from Hell” takes over
while.
Photograph
courtesy La Biennale di Venezia
Burying the Ex. The director Joe Dante states “Exes.
We’ve all had them. But every once in a while, there’s that one special ex. The
one who keeps coming back. No matter how hard we try to move on with our lives,
bury the past and learn to love again, they’re just a phone call, text, or
surprise visit away... I always believed that the best zombie films are the
ones that use the undead as a metaphor for a larger, more universal
issue—whether it be race relations in Night of the Living Dead, fear of disease
in 28 Days Later, or mass consumerism seen in the mindless zombies attacking a
shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead. Still, with all the belatedly popular zombie
entertainment that has been made over the years, no one has used a zombie to
represent a psychotic ex who just won’t go away... until now. Burying the Ex is
a zom-com, a new spin on the zombie/romantic comedy genres that will prove once
and for all that some relationships never die...”